His faithfulness and grace (sometimes "delayed")

This morning, I started the New Testament!  Hooray!

I am especially impressed by how God directly fulfilled the final prophecy of Malachi through the life of John the Baptist:

Malachi 4:5‭-‬6 NIV
"See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction."

Luke 1:16‭-‬17 NIV
"He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."

There are several "delays" in this story that I think are significant. 

First, the record of God speaking to his people is silent between Malachi and the time of Jesus and John the Baptist.  The angel, Gabriel, appeared to Zechariah after over four hundred years of silence, approximately the same duration that the Jews were slaves in Egypt.  Of course, to a people struggling with corporate moral purity and subjugation by pagan nations (not unlike their time in Egypt), they needed a savior, the Messiah.  To me, four hundred years seems like a significant delay. I wonder, why did God wait so long to send the Messiah?  Of course, I can't answer that question, but I do believe that God was intentional, not capricious, in his timing:

Romans 5:6 NIV
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

As I think about Advent season in a few months, I see a parallel.  As the Israelites were waiting for the Messiah for over four hundred years, so we have waited two thousand years for his return, but we do not grow weary in expecting Him to appear any day.

Second, I think there was a significant "delay" in the the lives of Zechariah and Elizabeth.  I can imagine that they prayed and fasted fervently for a child when they were young.  I imagine that they begged God every day for years, maybe more than a decade, to bless them with a child.  And maybe at some point, Zechariah gave up hope and didn't believe that God would grant them a child.  Maybe he stopped asking God for a child decades before Gabriel visited him in the temple. 

Luke 1:13 NIV
But the angel said to him: "Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John.

My paraphrase of Zechariah's response in Luke 1:18:
"What do you mean, 'my prayer has been heard'?  I stopped praying that prayer decades ago.  Now my wife and I are too old.  You are too late.  God waited too long to answer that prayer."

Sometimes God answers a recurring prayer with "not yet" for so long that we assume the answer is "no.  But God even answers the prayers that we have given up on and stopped praying, and He is intentional in his timing in answering our prayers:

Luke 1:19‭-‬20 NIV
The angel said to him, "I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time."

Third, Zechariah was "delayed" in offering incense in the temple. I wonder what some of the people waiting outside were thinking (v. 21):

"Zechariah has been in there a while.  Do you think he is OK?  You don't think that maybe... I mean... What if, you know... What if he wasn't holy enough to go in there? ... You know, they never did have a child.  What if it was his fault? What if he had some hidden sin?"

It is easy for us to slip into speculation and judgement, similar to Job's "friends".  I want to be a friend who believes in people and hopes with them.

Heavenly Father, thank you for your faithfulness and grace in accomplishing your good purpose in the world, our lives, and the lives of our friends.  You are good, and what we perceive as "delays" by you, you use to grow our faith and mature us.  May I be a man of faith and hope that you do fulfill your promises, and you are compassionately aware of the details of our lives.  I love you, and I pray in the name of Jesus.