In order that way may be "a people fit for the Lord." We need preparation. In fact, we need a lot of it. We not only need 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.
... we need an angel of the LORD to prepare the way for him by announcing his birth to his parents ...
the angel of the Lord appeared to him,
standing at the right of the altar of incense.
We need even more than this. We need a precedent for the whole thing. We are able to believe the angel that comes to Zechariah and Elizabeth because we know of the angel who appears to Manoah and his wife to announce the birth of Samuel ...
this boy is to be consecrated to God from the womb.
It is he who will begin the deliverance of Israel
from the power of the Philistines.
God does not want us to miss what he is doing. Zechariah has sufficient preparation when the angel appears before him. He knows of plenty of precedent in which God overcomes old age and barrenness, not just with Manoah, but also Abraham himself. Zechariah should know about this stuff. But as he goes forward to light the incense maybe these are historical events are just stories for him. They aren't concrete enough to shape his own expectations.
We know even more than he does. We see things still greater than the birth of John from aged parents. We see the birth of Jesus from a virgin with no human father. Nothing is impossible for God. We are called to let all that God has done so far prepare our hearts for what he wants to do. This Christmas he wants to do more than we can ask or imagine. Yet we have every reason to believe that he can. Let's try not to be like Zechariah...
But now you will be speechless and unable to talk
until the day these things take place,
because you did not believe my words,
which will be fulfilled at their proper time.”
Let us instead be full of trust in God. He wants his life to be even more fully manifested in the world and especially in each of our hearts. May he awaken our hearts by words which, to us, may once have been stories but which are in truth promises of things to come.
O God, you have taught me from my youth,
and till the present I proclaim your wondrous deeds.
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