Trusting God in the Disappointments and Delays: Learning from Elizabeth and Zechariah
By Rev. Kristen Yates
One of my fondest memories as a child was one of my dad’s birthday parties. To be honest with you, I don’t remember much about the festivities themselves, but what I do remember is the gigantic family slumber party that we had after the birthday meal.
You see, to the dismay of my parents, somewhere in the middle of the party, a pretty unexpected snowstorm began. Since my house was in the northern part of NJ in the Appalachian Mountains, we ended up getting a lot of snow accumulation and the hilly, windy roads around town got quite treacherous quite fast. What that meant was that nobody was able to drive home that night and thus, a grand slumber party ensued and I was absolutely thrilled. I could not think of a better way to end the day. There were pillows and blankets and people scattered in every nook and cranny of my house. It was absolutely glorious.
Unbeknownst to me, my parents did not enjoy these unexpected circumstances very much, for the whole situation was rather stressful to them – this was certainly not the birthday gift my dad was hoping for, but for me, an 8 or 9-year old who was oblivious to the demands this situation put on the adults, I was in heaven. I found this night to be one of the most fun nights of my life up unto that point. I asked my mom and dad, “When can we do this again?” I am pretty sure their answer was never.
Too bad though, because it was so great to be with my extended large family, and when I say large, I mean large. My grandmother was one of 15 children so I had great aunts and great uncles galore, and all the other family members that went along with them. A good number of them were a regular part of our family celebrations. I was really quite blessed.
So I found it to be fun growing up with this large and sometime loud NJ family that I loved, and I looked forward to the day when I would host my own gigantic family slumber party. Moreover, I looked forward to the day when I could expand this family even more by having my own husband and children. From the time I was a child, I knew this would be my destiny.
Since I was a smart kid, I of course dreamed of having a career, as well – that was very important to me, but I never dreamed of having this to the exclusion of having a family. Family was an essential part of who I was; as I grew older, I found that I loved children, and I also had a great role model in my mother who was a talented and smart speech pathologist, as well as a devoted mother and wife, so I dreamed of being like her.
It was a very good dream, I have to say, and I looked forward to its fulfillment. The problem though is that this dream never materialized. I waited on the Lord, but my 20s passed and I was still single and childless. I waited some more time but my 30s passed and I was still single and childless. So I waited some more time, and now I am pushing mid-40s and I am still single and at this point, in most likelihood will now always be childless. All the while, I move all around the country far away from the family I do have in order to do the ministry to which God has called me, and I continue to wait.
In today’s Scripture reading, we read of another woman who dreamed of having a child but had to wait – her name was Elizabeth. She was the daughter of a priest who was married to a priest named Zechariah. Both Elizabeth and Zechariah were righteous Jews; in fact, we are told that they both walked blamelessly in the sight of the Lord and followed all His commands, yet they were childless. Elizabeth was barren and both she and Zechariah were now advanced in age.
Now, this is the first time in the Scriptures that we meet Elizabeth and Zechariah so we don’t know much about their lives, but we can imagine some of what they must have gone through up until that point. You see, to be childless in Israel was to be seen as being under a curse. It was an absolute calamity. So, along with the sorrow that Elizabeth and Zechariah would have experienced in not having children, Elizabeth (in particular) would have also lived with a great deal of shame and at times may have even been socially isolated from others. People around her would have wondered (and perhaps even Elizabeth and Zechariah wondered, themselves, on occasion,) what they had done wrong to bring about this curse, but neither Elizabeth nor Zechariah had done anything wrong.
They trusted in God, served Him, and walked in faithfulness before Him, and at same time, God saw them, loved them, and was faithful to them.
Yet, year after year, decade after decade, they prayed and waited and continued to be childless. But then, in the sudden blink of an eye, everything changed. While faithfully fulfilling his religious duties at the Temple, Zechariah had an encounter with the Angel Gabriel. Gabriel appeared and told the aging Zechariah that Elizabeth would soon bear a son – a son that would bring them great joy.
At last, Elizabeth and Zechariah’s long wait was over. Just as God had taken away the extended and painful barrenness of Israelite heroines of old like Sarah and Hannah, He also did so for Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s sorrow and shame therefore turned into joy and praise of God.
This, however, was not even the best part of this story. You see, when Gabriel appeared to Zechariah, he did not just announce that Elizabeth and Zechariah’s long wait that was over, he announced that the people of Israel’s long wait that was over.
You see, behind the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah’s yearning and waiting was a much larger story of yearning and waiting. For hundreds of years, the people of Israel had lived in turmoil. After King David and King Solomon’s rule, the nation of Israel split up into Northern and Southern Kingdoms and the kings that ruled over the people were often unfaithful to God. To make matters worse, at one point in history; Assyria dragged off a number of people in the Northern Kingdom into exile; and not too long after that, Babylon conquered the Southern Kingdom, destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, and dragged off many of its people into exile.
It is during this time of extended turmoil that many of God’s prophets began to speak to God’s people, and one of the most important prophesies they made pertained to a Messiah, a king in the line of David who would bring a new beginning to the remnant of Israel, a king who would bring peace and justice and righteousness to not only Israel but to the whole world. This Messiah would also be a suffering Servant of God, one who would redeem sinners through vicarious suffering. Yet, despite this prophesy, year after year, the people of Israel waited and no Messiah came.
Now, after a while some things improved for the people of Israel. Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon and allowed the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. However, even after the Temple was rebuilt, there was no sign that God had actually returned to His Temple. There had been a physical manifestation of God’s presence in the Tabernacle when the Israelites wandered in the desert, and there had also been a physical manifestation of God’s presence in the First Temple built by King Solomon, but there was no record of God taking up residence in the Second Temple. And to add to this situation, the Prophets fell silent so there was no longer any word coming from God either.
One of the last prophets to write in this era was Malachi, who wrote in the mid 400s BC. In Chapter 3 of the Book of Malachi, the prophet wrote that the Lord would return to the Temple. Before that would happen though, the Lord would send a messenger who would prepare the way for Him. Listen to Malachi as he spoke in God’s words: “Behold, I send my messenger and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple . . ..”
Then in Chapter 4 in the last sentence of the Book, Malachi wrote, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. . ..”
And then after that, Malachi ceased writing and shortly after that, there was silence. 400 years of silence. No prophet spoke. No Messiah came. No physical manifestation of God came to the Temple. And to add insult to injury, a new world power, Rome, came to occupy Israel. All along, the people waited for and yearned for a savior.
And then one day in the sudden blink of an eye, everything changed. The Angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah in the Temple and said, “Do not be afraid Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall name him John . . . he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God and he will go before him in the spirit and the power of Elijah, to turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the ‘disobedient to the wisdom of the just,’ to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”
Do you hear the similarities between Malachi last words and the Angel Gabriel’s words? This similarity is no coincidence. This baby to be born to Zechariah and Elizabeth was the fulfillment of Malachi’s prophesy that Elijah would return and would prepare the way for the Messiah. Therefore, the people of Israel’s long wait was finally over.
Now, we can imagine that after waiting hundreds of years, the Jews might have thought that God had forgotten them, but it turns out that God was faithful after all. He remembered His people and He kept His promises. In fact, Elizabeth and Zechariah’s names pointed to God’s faithfulness.
Zechariah means “remembered by God” and Elizabeth means “God’s promise.”
So at last, salvation had finally come to the people of Israel. John would soon be born and he would walk in the steps of the prophet Elijah, and the promised Messiah that John would point to, would also soon be born. That Messiah would be named Jesus of Nazareth – we will hear about Him and His miraculous birth in the next section of Luke. His birth, life, death, and resurrection would change the entire world forever.
And yet, even now, 2000 years later, with the Messiah come and the Church birthed, we still wait. You see, the story is not yet complete. With the coming of Jesus, the Kingdom of God intersected with our world, and as a result amazingly good things have happened and continue to happen all around us all the time, however, the world we live in will not be completely renewed and restored until Jesus returns again, something He has promised to do.
Consequently, for now, good happens alongside evil. For now, the sinful flesh wrestles against the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. For now, good, God-given desires go unfulfilled. And for now, we see incompletely; we don’t fully comprehend God’s purposes in our lives – a reality that can cause great angst at times. Through it all, we are forced to wait. To wait for all things to be made right in ourselves, in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our cities, and in our world.
Now when I first read this passage about Elizabeth and Zechariah a few weeks ago to prepare for this sermon, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my own waiting for things to be made right in my life and in the world, and in particular I couldn’t help but be reminded of my particular waiting regarding having a family of my own. You see, like Elizabeth, I have been praying for a long time for children (and of course first a spouse). I long to host my own large family sleep-over at some point in time and to have pillows and blankets in every nook and cranny of the house instead of my one pillow and blanket. Yet I am still single.
Now, over the years, I have often asked God why He has not fulfilled the desires of my heart, especially when I have devoted my life to His service and especially when the world and church have told me these are good desires.
Like Elizabeth in this story, I have often felt great sorrow over the loss of children; I even went through a short but deep period of depression a few years ago over this matter as I headed towards a significant birthday.
And like Elizabeth, I have sometimes experienced shame over the years. While we no longer see childlessness as a curse in our culture, many in our church look quite skeptically at single career women. And many in our culture at large look skeptically at adults who are un-partnered in some manner; it’s just not normal, they think.
Yet, this is my life and when I have asked God why I have remained single, I have received no response except, “Trust me. I am good. I love you. I am faithful. I have a purpose for you. Your extended singleness is not a punishment I have put upon you but a circumstance in which I can bring about great good for you and for others.”
So friends, given this reality of my singleness and the response I have discerned coming from God, I am called each day to must make a choice to either give up hope or rather to trust God and to remain faithful to Him. Each day, I am called to place my dreams and desires in the hands of God, believing that God sees me, knows me and my deepest desires, sits with me in my pain, and has plans to prosper me and give me a hope and a future.
Each day, I am called to grapple with the fact that my future may not always be easy and may not look like what I had dreamed up or planned for – it may involve a spouse and children or it may not. At long last, like Elizabeth, I may see my dreams finally fulfilled. Or like the Jews in exile for their entire lives waiting for a Messiah, I may not see my dreams fulfilled in this lifetime.
Whatever happens though, I can trust that my life will be good for I have a loving God who is looking out for me and who is faithful to His promise to redeem me and to redeem the world. And perhaps, if I am faithful to my call, God may even use the ordinary, sometimes disappointing circumstances of my life to move his plan of redemption forward in small ways just as used Elizabeth’s ordinary and sometime disappointing circumstances.
It is interesting because when we talk about this particular Biblical story of Elizabeth and the birth of John, we often talk about the joy she had in finally having a child. We don’t often, however, talk about the possible difficulties and disappointments Elizabeth might have also had. Perhaps, for example, she had a difficult pregnancy or birth because she was old; perhaps she was exhausted much of the time during John’s upbringing because she did not have the energy that a much younger mother has when raising a child.
I am sure that raising John brought Elizabeth great joy, but I am sure it was not easy either, surely not the circumstances that either Elizabeth or Zechariah would have preferred. Yet, in God’s economy, everything was just as it should be, for through this situation, God was working out His greater plans of redemption for the world. Elizabeth and Zechariah and John’s life were a part of something much greater than they could have ever imagined. The actual circumstances of their lives were quite ordinary and perhaps even at times mundane, difficult, or disappointing, but it was in these ordinary circumstances, where God acted in His own timing to work for the renewal of the world.
When I reflect on these circumstances I have to admit that if it was true that God acted in the lives of Elizabeth and Zechariah and John to forward his redemptive plans, then it is possible that He could act similarly in my own circumstances (the ones I that I welcome and the ones that I do not) – in fact, if I am honest, I have seen this – not only have I experienced great joy over these past years, but I have seen how my singleness has allowed for me to do a great number of things in ministry that I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to do. This is a great encouragement to me.
And it should be a great encouragement to you as well. For if it is true that God can act through the circumstances of my life, then it surely must be true as well that God can act in your own life circumstances, as well, whatever they may be – whatever areas in your life where you have faced disappointments, delays, unfulfilled dreams, we can trust that God is at work, even if we don’t fully understand what he is doing.
I think there is a lot that we believers can learn from the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah and of the story of the people of Israel, as well. So I want to end my time with you this morning by asking a series of reflective questions for you to ponder here at church and perhaps at home when you have more time. You can spend the next few minutes in quietness with the Lord, pondering these questions or any other ones that might be relevant to you. And I encourage you to be honest with yourself and with God. There are no right or wrong ways to answer these questions. Be present to what you really think and believe and bring these before the Lord, who is there to receive and welcome you as you are, and to love you.
The way this will work is I’ll start off by reading the first set of questions. Then I’ll let you read the others during your time of quiet. After the time has passed, I’ll end our time in prayer.
Are there areas of your life where you are waiting for something to happen and yet day after day pass and nothing seems to change? What are these areas? Are the things you are waiting for the product of Godly desire or are they perhaps distorted in some way? What is your experience of God in those times of waiting?
Have you ever felt forgotten by God, discouraged, or even on the verge of giving up hope or even the faith? What did you do in those circumstances? What was your experience of God like in those times. Or, alternatively, have you ever had a distinct sense of God’s presence, love, and goodness in the midst of difficult circumstances? What was your experience of God like in those times?
When difficult circumstances arise or you are forced to wait for something for a long time, do you find it easy or difficult to trust God? Why do you think that is?
Have you ever seen God work through the ordinary and sometimes unexpected or even disappointing aspects of your life or someone else’s life? What did you notice in these times? What happened? What was your experience of God like in those situations?
Finally, as you sit with the story of the people of Israel waiting for their Messiah or the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah waiting for a child, can you find anything from their situation that can speak to your situation.
Closing Prayer: Dear Lord, thank you for your goodness and loving kindness. Thank you that you have a plan to redeem us and the whole world and that you are working in your timing through the ordinary circumstances of our lives to do this. Help us to trust that you are faithful to your promises, even when circumstances are challenging or when we must wait for our dreams and hopes to be fulfilled. Help us to trust you when our lives look different than our hopes and dreams. May we remember that no matter what our circumstances are, you see us, know us, sit with us in our questions and pain, and work within us for the good of your world. Amen.