Scripture Daily

Context No. 1778 of 4322 · Luke

Context · Reflection

Luke 1:1-7: in context

1Since many have undertaken to set in order a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, 2even as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word delivered them to us, 3it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write to you in order, most excellent Theophilus; 4that you might know the certainty concerning the things in which you were instructed. 5There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the priestly division of Abijah. He had a wife of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6They were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord. 7But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they both were well advanced in years.

Luke opens his Gospel by explaining his careful method: having followed everything closely from the beginning, drawing on eyewitnesses, he writes an orderly account so that Theophilus may know the certainty of what he has been taught. Then the story begins with a priest, Zechariah, and his wife Elizabeth, both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all his commandments. And yet, the text adds, they had no child, for Elizabeth was barren, and both were now advanced in years.

There is a quiet sorrow tucked into this introduction of a righteous couple: they had no child, and they were old. Zechariah and Elizabeth were, by the text's own account, genuinely godly, blameless, faithful in all the commandments; and for a lifetime they had carried the ache of an unanswered longing, childlessness, into old age, past the point where hope of a child would ordinarily remain. Their righteousness had not spared them this disappointment, nor secured them the thing they had surely prayed for through the long years. Here were faithful people whose deep prayer had gone unanswered for a lifetime. This is worth sitting with, because it is the experience of many faithful people, and it can be a stumbling block. We are tempted to think that if we are faithful enough, God will surely give us what we long for; and when the longing goes unanswered year after year, we can conclude that God has forgotten us, or that our faithfulness has failed, or that God is not good. Zechariah and Elizabeth's story says that godliness is no guarantee that our deepest prayers will be answered on our timetable, or in the way we ask. Faithful people carry unanswered longings, sometimes for a lifetime; that is not a sign of God's absence or their failure. And yet, the very placing of this couple at the start of the Gospel is a quiet promise: God had not forgotten them. Their long disappointment was about to become the setting for one of God's great acts. The unanswered prayer of decades was not proof that God was not at work; he was, in his own time, in ways they could not have foreseen. The faithful who carry long-unanswered longings are not forgotten by God, even when it feels most like it.

Do I carry a longing that has gone unanswered for years, and am I tempted to conclude that God has forgotten me or that my faithfulness has failed, or can I take heart from righteous Zechariah and Elizabeth, whose long disappointment God had not forgotten, that unanswered longing is not proof of God's absence, and that he may be at work in ways I cannot yet see?

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