Reflection for December 19
Today’s gospel (Luke 1:5-25) provides a glimpse into the enduring invitation to trust God with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
We find Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, holy and devoted children of God, living their lives resigned to the reality that they would not have children. In their estimation, their circumstances just did not allow that to be possible, barren and advanced in years as they were. Given the evidence, that explanation makes sense to the reader too.
But in the midst of his everyday life, Zechariah is suddenly caught off guard by a visit from an angel who admonishes him, “Do not be afraid because your prayers will be answered, and you will have a son.” Imagine being afraid of having your prayers answered?
This reading prompted me to reflect on how we can tend to brace ourselves for the worst when “bad news comes” and how it may frighten us to avail ourselves of the audacity to hope. I guess that’s only human. But the tender and joyful invitation to the callings of being alive in this time and in this place is to embrace the possibilities that there is good all around us – even the possibility of wholeness for our own lives and the life of our fractured world. That is what is being revealed in this story of hope.
We are fluent in the language and experience of catastrophe. We see and feel the pain of the world. And while that pain is true and real (maybe even present in your life in a particular way right now), it is not the whole story of US and certainly not the story God wants us to live. There’s an abundant reality of things going right – of extraordinary acts of generosity, goodness, beauty, kindness, service, creativity, LOVE.
Somehow, we don’t know how to tell this story of abundance as readily as we know how to relay the story of catastrophe. We need to be vigilant to orient ourselves to the things of God – to that which elevates, affirms, respects, honors, celebrates, delights, and reconciles. We will never know what comes next in our lives or the life of the world, but we can accept the invitation to trust the unseeable and towards what is life-affirming.
There will always be the tension of doubt and hope. God is calling us to choose hope.
Dawn Fleming