I make plans. I’ve always made plans. If I’m asked to do something or I’m going somewhere, then I’ve got a plan. If I’m going to be responsible for anything, I’ll make a plan. As I’ve grown older and hopefully a bit wiser (hopefully), I still make plans, but I know now that plans are what I do until the real action starts, and from that moment on, plans are always changing and what I end up with is rarely anything like what I thought it would be when I made my initial plan. What I’ve had to learn, often the hard way, is the old joke is true: “If you want to make God laugh—tell Him your plans.” But then that shouldn’t surprise me for way back in Isaiah’s time, God declared:
“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the LORD. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
Eugene Peterson translates God’s message this way: "I don't think the way you think. The way you work isn't the way I work." (Isaiah 55:8)
I suspect Zechariah might feel the same way. Zechariah was an old man married to an old woman, and like Abraham and Sarah, they had no kids. It just wasn’t going to be in the cards. What Zechariah did have going for him was he was of the tribe of Levi which made him eligible to serve as one of the priests at the magnificent temple in Jerusalem. There were so many priests eligible to serve that they were all organized into teams which took turns, and with each of the eight teams consisting of fifty or more priests, the chances were slim any one priest would get to do something really important during one of the temple rituals. Priests were selected by lot for the important jobs, and a priest might go a lifetime and not win “the lottery.”
Well one day Zechariah did win. Something I’m sure he had planned for and hoped for came to pass. He was going to be the one who carried in and lit the incense, the fragrance of which represented the prayers of the people wafting up to God. I’m thinking Zechariah was going through the plans for what he needed to do and how he needed to do it over and over again. No one, not even people who ended up getting named in the Bible want to mess up their big moment.
What Zechariah wasn’t counting on is that while he had a plan to get through the ritual flawlessly, he’d not accounted for God’s plan to send a message via angel. Before the days of text messages, email, and even snail mail, God sent angels as messengers. The one thing that is consistent is that when angels show up, the universal reaction is fear. Angels just don’t figure into our plans, let alone the message angels bring. It was a message of good news…Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were going to get to change diapers on their own kid. “No way, “ was the gist of Zechariah’s response. Funny thing is that once he gets over his fear, it’s not the fact an angel is talking to him that throws him, it’s the angel’s message, he was going to be a dad. And for that lack of faith, and with the subtle humor God can surprise with, Zechariah is struck dumb until his son is born. No making the kind of big announcements prospective dads like to make for Zechariah. He was going to have to shut up and watch it all come to pass just as the angel had said it would. You can read it all for yourself in Luke 1:5-21; 57-66.
What we’ll wrestle with this Sunday is to learn from Zechariah’s experience, so that when God interrupts our plans with His plans, we don’t miss what is best by hanging onto what is merely good.
Now for what’s on my desk…
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Now you know what I know.
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