The Sound of Music counsels us to ‘start at the very beginning’, but it’s not always easy to know where a story begins! It’s very easy when looking at the Easter story to focus on the last week of Jesus’s life, to concentrate on His crucifixion and resurrection, and certainly all four gospels give us more information about this last week of His life than they do about anything else. But in Luke’s gospel, we see that the story began much earlier even than the start of His ministry or than His birth. Luke spends a large part of chapter 1 telling us about relatives of Jesus (Zechariah and Elizabeth) and the miraculous conception of their son, John.
John, the herald who prepares the way of the Lord, was a baby born to an elderly, childless couple, testimony that with God, nothing is impossible. We see also in this story the fact that it’s not always easy to deal with the miraculous. Zechariah’s ‘mistrustful words’ when the angel announces God’s plans to him lead to nine months of silence: he is not able to speak until he testifies in writing to what the angel has told him when his son is actually born.
This reminds us that waiting and silence are as much a part of God’s story as miracles and speech. Sometimes, it takes time to process what God is doing and we have to ‘wait it out.’ If you’re in a waiting time now, don’t give up. You’re in good company!
