An Answer to Prayer
“Elizabeth, your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month,” Gabriel told Mary, “For no word from God will ever fail.” Luke 1:36–37
Elizabeth waited with the others assembled outside the temple. Inside, her husband Zechariah burned incense in the Holy Place during the time of prayer.
But when he came out, Zechariah gestured and held his hands over his mouth. Something had happened to him and he couldn’t speak. Had he seen a vision? Had an angel appeared to him? Elizabeth walked home with him in silence.
As soon as they arrived home, he grabbed a clay tablet and wrote about an angel named Gabriel who had told him their prayer had been heard. They were going to have a baby. True—even though they were both old and hadn’t been able to have a child in their chil
d-bearing years.
In those days, barrenness was considered a sign of God’s disapproval. Elizabeth felt shame, even though both she and Zechariah were godly people: both from a priestly line who obeyed God’s commands.
Elizabeth knew the Scriptures. She remembered Sarah’s son, Isaac, born in her old age. She remembered Hannah’s fervent prayers for a child, answered with a son. “The Lord has done this for me,” Elizabeth said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people” (Luke 1:25).
Gabriel told them to call the baby John. He’d be a special child—not only because of his miraculous birth—others would rejoice too. He would prepare people for the coming of the Messiah!
When she was six months pregnant, Elizabeth’s young cousin Mary visited her. The angel Gabriel had told Mary she’d be the Messiah’s mother. At Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth’s baby leapt for joy and she was filled with the spirit (Luke 1:41). Babies often move in the womb, but John leapt! John, later called John the Baptist, prepared the way for Jesus, the Messiah, before either baby was born.
Have you prayed for many years and then suddenly received an answer? How did God bless you and others? Still waiting? Don’t give up.
Dig Deeper:
Read Psalm 139:1-18. Gabriel indicated that God knew Zechariah and Elizabeth’s names. God knows our names too. What else does God know about us even before we’re born?
How did God use a time of barrenness in the Bible to prepare the way for something extraordinary that he was about to do through common ordinary people in: Genesis 17:15-19 and 1 Samuel 1:1-28?
God not only knows our names, what else has he prepared for us according to Revelation 2:17? What do you think yours will be?
Nancy J. Baker
This devotion is part of a series on Women of the Bible.