Wilmot First Presbyterian Church

Scripture: Luke 1:25

There is a recurring theme in Scripture of women who had trouble becoming pregnant. (Sarai, Rebecca, Rachel, Hannah…)  Elizabeth knew their sorrow, their frustration and perhaps even some anger.  Did she view herself as some sort of failure.  Whatever her interior perceptions, she shared their lot.  Sarah (Sarai) named her baby “Laughter” (Isaac) because at her age the idea itself was such a joke (though God had the last laugh).  Elizabeth, like Sarah, was an older woman (see vs 7).  When Elizabeth became pregnant she didn’t laugh, she pulled the blinds, locked the doors, and stopped answering the phone for five months (vs 24).

I imagine it took that long for Elizabeth and Zechariah to stop shaking.  When people receive what they were afraid to even hope for they may laugh, like Sarah, but I think more often they cry.  It’s just too much.  Perhaps for Elizabeth and Zechariah there was both laughter and tears but whenever people realize the proximity of God in their life, there is always trembling awe.  It is easy to believe in a kind, grandfatherly, benign and fairly impotent god who resides somewhere in the heavens far away.  That kind of god requires nothing real from us.  It is quite another thing to have that living, real and omnipotent God actually touch your life and so close you can almost smell him.

In the Bible, people who encounter God (theophanies) are shaken to their boots.  Moses was so startled when he encountered God that his hair turned white.  Jacob limped for the rest of his days… Scriptures tell us anyone who looks directly at God dies instantly.  We like a god we can handle even if no such god really exists.  Many who claim to be Christian seem to prefer that benign, far away god to an intimate, personal and overwhelming God who fills your life.  In our lives and in our church the truth is sometimes our “God” is fairly dead and so are we likewise spiritually.  Few of us are eager to have our perception of the world and the way it works upended, but we can’t truly hang on to both our perception and our claim to seek God’s advent in our life.   If we are seeking for the real God, no one can truly encounter Him without being shaken alive.  

PRAYER: Living God, I confess that too often I go through the motions, half dead.  I ask you for my desires but hope and expect you keep your distance.  Surprise me.  Shake me awake and stir in me the uneasy knowledge of your living presence.  In Jesus name, AMEN

ACTIVITY: Was there a time in your life when your experience of God was just awe?  When you remember a time in your life when you most felt God’s presence, what was your mind set and what were you feeling?