Sometimes I forget that Gabriel's conversation with Zechariah was the first time in over 500 years that anyone had heard any message from God. How humbling and amazing that must have been! To be the person whom God chose to break the silence that had existed for generations.
And then there's Mary, who also gets a message from God. So we've gone from absolute silence over hundreds of years to two messages in the span of a few months.
I wonder what Zechariah and Mary had considered faith before these moments. Did they truly believe in the history of their people? Did they simply follow their traditions and customs because they knew no other way? Maybe it was a mixture of wanting to believe and being too afraid not to. Regardless, imagine the wonder and relief it must have been to have their belief validated. In those moments, desperate faith became revealed truth. What they prayed was true was suddenly made verifiable. Abstract became concrete. Stories became history. The unexplainable became reality.
I wish we could have experiences like that today. I wish that we, as a people of God, could experience God in such a tangible way that all doubt could be removed. I wish that, in one moment, faith could be replaced by experience, and that we could say that we have truly heard the voice of God. I wonder if Zechariah and Mary truly understood the rarity of their experiences, and just how blessed they really were.
God, in these uncertain times, I humbly ask that you make yourself real to us in the way that these two people understood. Be to us more than an exercise in philosophy or a simple part of our heritage. And, if and when you do, please open our eyes and our hearts and our minds so that we can recognize it.
Keep Soaring,
B
