We are told that good things come to those who wait. We’re told that patience is a virtue.
But I have to wonder if we really believe that.
Last year, Walt Disney World unveiled a new feature allowing visitors to bypass the long wait times for some of their most popular rides. The Lightning Lane Premier Pass is a high-priced, one-day pass that provides one-time entry to every designated Lightning Lane attraction in a single park. Instead of waiting in the “regular” line, the Premier Pass gives you immediate access to the Lightning Lane, the shortest line at the most popular attractions at any given time. The price for the Premier Pass varies by date and theme park. A few weeks ago, over the Thanksgiving break, the Premier Pass for Magic Kingdom would have cost you $429 per person per day, and they were completely sold out for the entire week.
Maybe the saying should be, “Good things come to those who are willing to pay up.”
And Disney isn’t alone in this. After surveying more than 650 theme parks, zoos, and aquariums across the country, one travel-research firm reports that about half of them have already adopted a similar “skip the line” option with another 20% saying they would be introducing this option in the coming year. The Lightning Lane concept is a savvy way of capitalizing on our impatience and the latest concession to “on demand” culture. We don’t like to wait for ANYTHING. We want what we want when we want it.
But the Christmas season is really about waiting. I think that’s one of the best things about it. Sure, you could say that Christmas is over-commercialized and there’s a lot of materialism that goes into our celebration. I wouldn’t disagree. It seems that a lot of people think Christmas is about “wanting” instead of “waiting.” And can you blame them? There’s only one letter’s difference between the two words.
But in truth, Christmas teaches us an important lesson about waiting. We start putting out the Christmas decorations weeks in advance — and the anticipation builds while we wait. We begin counting down the days until Santa arrives — and those December days just seem to go by so slowly when you’re a child! When you see a package under the tree with your name on it, you can’t just rip it open. No, you have to wait until Christmas. Think about how counter-cultural that is these days. As best I can tell, this is one of the few ways we’re actively trying to cultivate patience in our on-demand “Lightning Lane” world.
The Christmas season is really about waiting. Some people refer to this as the season of “Advent.” The word itself simply means “arrival.” It’s a reminder that people waited a long time for the arrival of the Messiah.
I’ve been thinking about the angelic announcements recorded in the gospels which herald the coming of the Messiah. Luke describes a time of great waiting, for the people of Israel but also for an elderly couple named Zechariah and Elizabeth.
In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.
Luke 1:5-7
I find it really interesting that the gospel story of Jesus doesn’t begin with Jesus. It begins with other people. Luke and Matthew each record a genealogy — a list of Jesus’s ancestors: so and so begat so and so, generation after generation. The story of Jesus begins with this lineage. It begins among a particular people in a particular place and time. The story of Jesus is told within the context of the stories of Zechariah and Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary, Caesar and Herod. And that shows us something important: it shows us how human Jesus is — because your story doesn’t begin with you and my story doesn’t begin with me. Our stories begin with those who came before us: parents and grandparents and great-greats who loved and lived and died just like us.
When Luke tells the story of Jesus, he begins with Zechariah and Elizabeth. He says that they’re righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands blamelessly. And these righteous people have been waiting. Luke says that they’re without child and they’re both advanced in years. I imagine their walk with God was filled with both wanting and waiting — the fervent prayers asking God to bring them a child, followed by the interminable waiting, the grueling process of thinking, “Maybe this is the month.” In their day and among their people, for a woman to be without child was considered to be a judgment from God. That’s likely why Luke says that Zechariah and Elizabeth were “righteous” and “blameless.” It’s to let us know that their condition is not the result of some hidden sin, some punishment from God. They’ve been faithful to God, even when they haven’t received their heart’s greatest desire. They’ve done a lot of wanting and a lot of waiting. It seems that those two often go hand in hand.
And in this way, Zechariah and Elizabeth are a microcosm of the Jewish people of their day. By the first century, the Jews had been waiting a long time for God to send His promised Messiah. As N.T. Wright puts it, even though the Promised Land was occupied by the Romans, the Jews in the first century lived with a feeling that there was more to come in this long story of redemption God was writing. I guess that’s one of the important elements of waiting: a sense that there is more to come. Zechariah and Elizabeth’s waiting parallels the waiting of the people as a whole.
The Old Testament closes with God promising to send a messenger to prepare the way for the Messiah. In Malachi 4:5, God says that this prophet will come in the spirit of Elijah. By Zechariah and Elizabeth’s day, the people had been living with this expectation for four hundred years. It was like this present under the tree with their name on it, but the people didn’t know when they could open it.
So this waiting couple is part of this waiting people. But as we will see, things are about to change.
Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. 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. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. 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.”
Luke 1:8-17
Zechariah was a priest and he was chosen by lot for the burning of the incense at the temple. The altar of incense was in the Holy Place with a curtain separating it from the Holy of Holies. Twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, priests would burn incense on this altar as a perpetual offering to the Lord. Given that there were approximately 18,000 priests serving the temple at this time, this usually occurred only once in the lifetime of a priest.
And that adds another layer of “waiting” to this story. This is a career highlight for Zechariah the priest. He has waited his whole life for this moment. And this clues us in that all of this waiting is about to come to an end.
The angel says, Your prayer has been heard. Which prayer? Well, the prayer for a child, of course. The angel promises that Zechariah and Elizabeth will have a baby boy named John who will go before the Lord in the spirit of Elijah. We know him as John the Baptist. What was promised through Malachi is now being fulfilled.
“Your prayer has been heard” is a clue that Zechariah and Elizabeth never lost faith, even while they were waiting. That means that they were continuing to pray for a miracle, even in their old age. Either that or the angel means that God was now sending the answer to the prayers they prayed all those years ago. Either way, this points us to the importance of prayer as the activity of God’s waiting people. This is how we live out faithfulness — by praying as we wait. This is how we keep hope alive.
This story is a reminder that God hears our cries. Sometimes people give up on prayer because they’re not sure that anything is happening. It doesn’t seem like their prayers are going through, like they’re not making any real difference. Their circumstances remain the same and nothing ever changes. But Zechariah and Elizabeth’s story reminds us that God does hear. And God answers as God wills. Sometimes He answers quickly; at other times, we have to wait. But while we wait, we pray.
This is the great danger of an on-demand, Lightning Lane culture. It conditions us away from the long work of prayer. We pray about something once or twice and God doesn’t answer immediately so what do we do? We throw in the towel and think that God doesn’t care or God doesn’t hear our cries. And we miss out on the lessons we’re supposed to learn while we wait.
Here is what I am trying to say: often times, faithfulness simply amounts to waiting.
Waiting on God to show you what you should do.
Waiting on Him to answer your prayer.
Waiting on God to open a door or close a door or give you a sign.
We get frustrated sometimes because it may seem as if nothing is really happening while we’re waiting. But from a faith perspective, a LOT is happening in the waiting. There are some really important lessons we learn as we wait:
- David was anointed as the king of Israel when he was a teenager, but he didn’t take the throne until much later. He spent as many as fifteen years in the wilderness, running for his life from King Saul, who wanted to kill him. Sometimes waiting involves time in the wilderness — but that’s usually where our character is formed.
- Abraham and Sarah waited twenty-five years for God to fulfill His promise to them. Like Zechariah and Elizabeth, they were well beyond their childbearing years and this tested their faithfulness. But through those long years of waiting, Abraham and Sarah learned to trust God and to trust His timing. And that’s the same lesson we learn when we wait: when we wait, we’re learning how to trust God and trust His timing.
Are you waiting on the Lord to do something?
In the waiting, there might be a lesson.
When we wait, we learn how to trust.
Trust God and trust His timing.
Often times, faithfulness simply amounts to waiting.
And all of that sounds really nice in a sermon. But real life is sometimes messier than the sermons make it sound. And the next part of the story demonstrates this.
Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”
Luke 1:18
Why does Zechariah say this? I honestly don’t know. Gabriel tells him that his prayers are being answered, but after all this waiting, it seems like Zechariah is having a little moment of doubt. He says, “How can I be sure of this?” I’m thinking, “I don’t know…maybe the fact that an angel has come down from heaven to deliver this message directly to you? Isn’t that proof enough?”
The only thing I can figure is that the waiting has worn Zechariah down.
I’m thinking that’s the case because sometimes the waiting wears me down, too.
And waiting probably wears you down, too.
I’m thinking that some of you are waiting right now: waiting on a job, waiting to find the right relationship, waiting to get pregnant, waiting on test results, waiting on this season of grief to come to an end — so many of us are waiting right now.
Has the waiting worn you down?
If so, I just want you to know that you’re not alone. If you heard the stories I get to hear on a weekly basis, you’d know that you’re not alone in the struggle. If the waiting is wearing you down, don’t lose heart. Hold fast to God’s promises. Keep hope alive. The Word of God is certain. He may not act according to our preferred timeline, but may we never mistake His unhurried pace for unfaithfulness.
Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
Psalm 27:14
Hope is trusting in God’s character and God’s promises. So even if the waiting is wearing you down, keep hope alive.
Because he questioned God’s messenger, Zechariah is struck with silence until the child is born. But when the time comes for him to be named, Zechariah writes on a tablet: “His name is John.” And immediately his ability to speak returns — and he praises God. The time of waiting has come to an end. And God has put into motion this good news of great joy.
Good things do come to those who wait…those who wait on the Lord in faith.
already & not yet 