A Life Worth Living

“In the beginning, God created the world and everything in it.” This is how my boys start their history lessons, by reciting a timeline from creation to the present as part of their curriculum. They look back to understand their place within a much bigger story, learning about other humans’ experiences, victories, and failures.

Christ’s birth is a punctuation so seismic on the timeline of creation that humanity is compelled to reckon time as Before Christ (B.C.) and After Christ (A.D.). Before we can witness how God fulfills His promise of Messiah, we need to follow the Christmas narrative in Luke’s gospel. Luke records events starting with;

The foretelling of the Birth of John the Baptist. (Read Luke 1:5-23)

Luke 1:6 gives us a window into the parents of John the Baptist, Zechariah and Elizabeth. They were righteous in God’s eyes and careful to obey all of the Lord’s commandments. Zechariah was a priest serving in the temple (vs 8-10). As Zechariah continues his priestly duties, an angel appears to him with good news: God had heard his prayer, and Elizabeth his wife would bear him a son who would be greatly used by the Lord.

Zechariah responds with “How can I be sure this will happen?” He and his wife were both very old, so it seems fair to ask the how question, right? Part of me wants to respond, ‘Well, Zechariah, you were praying about this; I mean, God answered your prayer.’ Then again, I wonder, did it all seem too good to be true? The Bible doesn’t leave us speculating, it reveals Zechariah’s heart … “but now since you didn’t believe what I said, you will be silent and unable to speak.” Zechariah did not believe.

2. The timeline continues with another foretelling: The birth of Jesus.

We are introduced to Mary, who will be the mother of Jesus. We are told Mary is a virgin and engaged to be married. She has found favor with God. Mary, like Zechariah, receives a message. She will bear a son called Jesus, the Son of the Most High. He will be great and will reign over an eternal kingdom (v32-33).

This message is amazing to Mary, a young unmarried girl, and she too asks a how question. She wonders how she, a virgin, can have a child. The angel answers that all this would be through the power of the Holy Spirit (v35). Mary’s response: “I am the Lord’s servant, let it be to me according to your word.” Mary believed!

Both Zechariah and Mary received a message that required faith. From their responses, one believed, and the other did not.

What can we learn from these two accounts? It takes faith to believe what God says. It takes faith to believe that many moons ago, a Savior was born through a virgin, just as it was prophesied. This birth is part of a bigger story, a story of God’s redemptive plan for mankind. As it unfolds in the pages of the Bible, we need faith to believe. The question for us is, ‘will I believe what God has said in His word? Will I have faith?’

Another lesson I gleaned from this story is that even the righteous can have moments or seasons of unbelief. Zechariah was righteous in God’s eyes and careful to do what He said, yet he had a moment of unbelief. Is there hope for such a one? Yes!

Mark 9:24 shows us how we can respond to such times. “Immediately the father cried out and said, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’” I love the immediacy of the father’s cry for help. We too can cry out to God for help in moments of unbelief; we don’t have to wait. God, by His Spirit and through His word, can help us overcome our unbelief.

As we look back on history and how powerfully God has moved on behalf of His people in the past, we can look ahead with faith. We too, like Mary, can believe what He has said about us in His word and say, ‘Let it be to me according to your word.’