The Promised One: Advent Day 14

Read & Journal

Today, read Luke 1:1-25. Here are some suggested journaling prompts to guide you:

• Today’s Scripture reading covered a lot of ground. Take a few minutes to outline what you’ve read in your own words.

• What did you learn about God and his character in these verses?

• Does this passage teach you anything about Jesus, his purpose or mission?

• As you think about what you read, is there any particular verse or section that helped you to understand something about yourself?

• What does this passage reveal about John the Baptist and his role in God’s story of redemption?

• Judging from Zechariah’s response to the angel, the angel’s announcement seemed utterly impossible to him. Are there circumstances, sins or relationships in your life where it seems impossible for God to work? Be bold enough to admit them to God today, asking for Him to help you to trust him.

• Consider the angel’s words in verse 20: “For my words will certainly be fulfilled at the proper time.” Thinking back to all you’ve read and studied over the past few weeks, how is that a true statement? How was God bringing the plan of salvation he had been promising since the beginning to fruition?

Ponder

From the very beginning, God had been whispering hope to his people. “You will strike his heel, but he will crush your head,” he promised the serpent in the garden. To Abraham, he promised a son through whom God would bless the nations. Through the patriarchs and the judges, through his promise to David and the bold words of the prophets, God had planted seeds of salvation, woven the thread of redemption through the greater story he was writing through all of history. Finally, in the centuries before John the Baptist’s birth, God had gone silent, stilling the prophets’ tongues. God always keeps his promises, so the Messiah would come, but when?

Then, at just the right time, God began to speak. To a righteous priest named Zechariah, the angel of God promised a son who would “turn many Israelites to the Lord their God” and “prepare the people for the coming of the Lord.” Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth, were to name him John, which means “the Lord has shown favor.” But when Zechariah heard the promise, maybe the words rang a bit hollow. Was this a joke? Zechariah knew he was too old and his wife barren—what the angel spoke of was impossible. After the long years of hoping and waiting and seeking to obey the Lord, now God was going to fulfill the dream that had filled the early years of their marriage but had since grown so dusty and threadbare they’d finally packed it away in the recesses of their hearts?

There was pain in Zechariah’s questions, and also doubt, and the angel said Zechariah would be unable to speak until the child was born. Think of all those months as Zechariah silently watched his wife as she pushed the gray hair from her brow and progressed through her pregnancy. God had broken his silence, and he had kept his promise—at just the right time.

It may not have felt like the right time for Zechariah. If you’ve walked with the Lord long, you’ve recognized that his timing usually doesn’t fit inside the parameters you set for him or the five-year plan you outlined as a young adult. When God feels distant or silent, it can be hard to trust that he is a God who keeps his promises—or even that he cares.

But in the silence, trust that God is working. Trust the whispers of hope he has sprinkled throughout his Word and throughout your own life. He is faithful. He is near. And he always keeps his promises. At just the right time, God will reveal the next step in your story.