Faith explored.

Interesting couple of weeks, sermon-wise, at church. As our new senior pastor has begun his pastorate at Christmas time, he's started in Luke's gospel, chapter 1. Basically he's explored the faith of Zechariah the priest (John the Baptist's father) and the faith of the virgin Mary. If you've read these accounts you know that Zechariah and Mary both got visits from Gabriel the archangel.

(rabbit trail: how cool would it have been to be Gabriel? He got to stand in the presence of God AND delivered birth announcements!)

Again, if you've read these accounts, the contrast in the faith of these 2 people is fairly obvious. Zechariah immediately doubted Gabriel's message, as he couldn't see how he could have a son in his old age.

(rabbit trail: I like Zechariah's phrasing: "I am old and my wife is well along in years." Even if he did doubt, he knew enough not to call his wife "OLD.")

So as a result, Zechariah the priest got the smack put down on him by Gabriel - his tongue was disabled until the baby was born.

Mary, on the other hand, took Gabriel's message to her with shocking calm. Her response was similar to Zechariah, but the difference was that her question was one of curiosity, "how will this be?" In essence, she was saying, "Ok, I believe you, but how is this going to work?" So Gabriel lets her in on it and she "pondered these things in her heart." She did run off to tell her relative Elizabeth and apparently stayed with her for 3 months, Luke says. Why she did that in the midst of her engagement to Joseph, I don't understand, but that's a minor detail anyway.

The moral of the story here, I think, is that our response to God's message should be one of belief and not doubt. This is not a new concept, as it is explored in different places throughout the Bible, but I guess these 2 accounts have driven the point home for me.

I want Mary's faith, not Zechariah's doubt. I'm not totally there yet, but as Mark Lowry says, "I'm not perfect but being perfected."