Park United Methodist Church

Isaiah 9:2-7

Luke 1:5-25

 

Reflection:  God is near.  God will show up.

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We aren’t the first ones, nor probably the last, to feel that way.  Last week, we talked about God’s Steadfast Love - that there is nothing that can separate us from God.  This week, we turn to God’s Faithful Witness.  This is particularly important when we have been waiting and waiting and wondering where God is.

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We often hear this passage from Isaiah around Christmas time.  In Isaiah’s time, the people of Israel (the Northern Kingdom) had fallen to the Assyrian Empire, and the southern kingdom was afraid of what would happen to them.  Isaiah reminds them that God is a light in the darkness they feel.  That a child will be born who will lead them to this peace, that justice will roll down from the mountains as Micah had told them.  

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They had to wait 150 years for Joshua and Zerubbabel to begin to lead them out of exile and rebuild the temple, and it was about 550ish years before Jesus was born.  Yet, God kept God’s promises to his people.     

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Sometimes, when God meets humanity in our corporate mess, it takes a while.  God met Moses at the burning bush to call him to do his work.  The people got frustrated waiting and built a golden calf, and God still chose to show up for us again, meet us, although it did end up taking the people forty years to travel about 250 miles.

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God keeps showing up for us.  Jesus met the woman at the well in the middle of broken relationships.  He invited those tax collectors who were outcasts to be disciples, and he met the man possessed and abandoned outside of town and freed him so that he could join his community once more. He met Peter in the middle of his heartbreak and denial of discipleship, giving him another chance to follow and lead. 

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Zechariah and Elizabeth mark such a wonderful example of God showing up.  They were beyond childbearing age and had longed for a child.  They had prayed and hoped and thought God did not hear them.  When Zechariah went on duty, the angel told him the plan.  It was so startling to hear his prayers were actually going to be answered that he was full of questions and probably doubts, despite the fact that an angel was in front of him. How, when, is this possible? They had waited so many long years and had given up on the dream in their hearts.  Here, the angel tells him he will be silent until the child is born.

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Now, usually when we read this, most of us automatically think this is a punishment.  He didn’t listen, so now he is silenced.  Yet, have you ever noticed that when you are silent, the thoughts crowd your head.  The thoughts aren’t bad.  It is literally how we process information.  If we never stop and sit with our own thoughts, then we can never tell when God is talking to us.  When we are so busy making excuses, we don’t have the time to hear God in the silence, answering prayers in unexpected ways.

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Many of us are so busy shutting out our thoughts, we shut God out, too.  There is no possibility to meet God in the mess because we throw up walls and reasons, and excuses.  Perhaps we need to just take some time to sit with God.  To remember God’s unrelenting light that keeps showing up.  Sometimes it shows us things we don’t want to see in our life or around us, and other times it shows us the very next step we need to take and our very best hope for the future.  Let us take a few minutes now.