Advent is a good gift given by God to His people at the end of every year to help us prepare our hearts for the coming King. But have you ever been so wounded by the wait for a good gift that by the time it arrives, it’s difficult to receive it with joy, trust in the goodness of God, or peace?

I have.

It took my husband and I five years to have our oldest daughter. Over the course of those five years, I had two miscarriages, a surgery, and wept many tears. Once I was finally pregnant and out of the woods of my first trimester, at our twenty-week ultrasound, the doctor found cysts on the baby’s lungs, cysts that were so large, they were pressing on her heart, affecting its growth. From that moment on, we spent every week in the office of a high-risk doctor, met with a pediatric cardiologist who told us our daughter might never be able to run or play like other children, and a fetal surgeon who consulted with us about the possibility of in utero surgery.

Weeks before Lillian was born, the cysts disappeared. There was no explanation other than the hand of God had miraculously healed her.

By the time she was born, I was worn out with the wait, weary to the bone from a journey that had required such intense trust and faith.

I still remember bringing her home from the hospital and thinking, “God, thank You for the good gift of the life of my child, but any time You want to give me something good, You require something hard to grow my faith. So for now, my family and I are good. I love You, but I prefer to love You from afar. I cannot honestly say with the psalmist right now that Your nearness feels like my good (Psalm 73:28).”

It took months and a great deal of time in quiet and silence before God in His Word, prayer, and in community before my heart was healed enough to draw close to God, trusting His sovereign kindness and love once again.

Scripture gives us another example of someone worn out by the wait. In Luke 1, we are told of a couple named Zechariah and Elizabeth who “were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years” (Luke 1:6-7).

When the angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah and announces the news of the gift of a son who will be born to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord, Zechariah responds with, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years” (Luke 1:18). While his words reveal his doubt, they also reveal a wound that needed to be healed. For while I had

experienced pain from barrenness for five years, Zechariah and Elizabeth had waited for decades. And the wait had worn away his ability to trust in the power of a God to make good on His promises.

But here’s what I love: even when Zechariah responds with doubt, unbelief, and hurt, God doesn’t nullify or take away his good gift because he can’t receive it with joy or peace. As Old Testament commentator Derek Kidner says, “[God] knows how men speak when they are desperate.”

But God does give Zechariah the gift of silence. Gabriel tells him, “And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time” (Luke 1:20). And it is in the silence that God does something in Zechariah’s heart that only silence can produce.

After nine long months when Zechariah can finally speak again, what pours out of his mouth is something called The Benedictus, a Latin phrase meaning, “The Blessing”:

And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying,
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has visited and redeemed his people
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
that we should be saved from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us;
to show the mercy promised to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant,
the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us
that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies,
might serve him without fear,
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
in the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
In Luke 1:67-79

Instead of proclaiming, “I have a son!”, the first words to cross Zechariah’s lips are, “Blessed be the Lord…”. He continues this blessing or praise of the God of Israel for eight verses before ever saying a word about his long-awaited son.

In his prophetic song, there are at least sixteen references to Scriptures and promises from the Old Testament. Zechariah mentions Abraham, David, the prophets, and quotes the angel Gabriel’s words to him directly from Malachi.

In verses 68-70, he speaks of God visiting and “redeeming” His people, a word that means “saving at a cost” or “rescuing at a high price.” And the reference to the holy prophets stresses that Zechariah now believes God is continuing to work out His plan just as He said He would, a thought that is further emphasized through references to “our fathers,” “holy covenant,” and “the oath the He swore to Abraham.” In verses 72-75, he proclaims that God will not go back on what He has sworn and will bring the covenant He made with Abraham thousands of years before to its consummation. And at the end of the song, he references the point and motivation of God’s remembrance: “to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God” (Luke 1:77-78).

So what has silence done for Zechariah?

It has helped him remember God’s Word.

It helped him remember that while Zechariah was silent, God was not. He was ever and always speaking.

Zechariah used his silence well and spent nine months pulling the faithfulness of God from the past into his present. And while a child grew in Elizbeth’s belly, hope and healing grew in Zechariah’s heart. God’s Word birthed internal revival in a man who had been worn down by disappointment and doubt in the merciful character of His God.

We all need this healing, especially at the end of the year.

A few weeks ago, I lost a dear friend to cancer. Another friend called last week and told me of her recent cancer diagnosis. My family is walking through the realities of an aging parent with dementia. So while there are always many reasons to praise, there are also the realities of loss and grief that take their toll on the capacity of our heart to trust in a good and faithful God.

This is why Advent is so necessary and so helpful. The season of Advent is a gift to the people of God who need to become reacquainted with the character of God through His Word as a good covenant-keeper we can trust and love.

God may not give us the gift of literal silence like He did with Zechariah, but He does give us the capacity to create silence in times with Him to remember His promises both individually and corporately.

While it’s difficult during the Christmas season, we can create margin to wake up early, take time during a lunch break, or at night before bed, to pull the faithfulness of God from the past into our present. We can schedule weekly times as families or small groups or church communities to read God’s promises together and enfold them into both the pain and joy from the last year.

We can purposefully recall the words of the prophets from Samuel to Malachi and remember how God fulfilled them through the first coming of Christ and will fulfill them fully in His second coming. We can remember the covenant God made with David to establish a just and righteous King on the throne of Israel from his family forever and trace its progression through the stable in Bethlehem all the way through to the triumphant return of Christ.

As we remember and sit in the silence, God’s Word will birth internal revival in our own hearts, just as it did for Zechariah.

In the silence of Advent, we want to thank God for how He moved towards us with obvious blessing. But we also want to take ample time, as long as is needed, to remember how He moved towards us in our pain. Like with Zechariah, the places in our hearts that are bound up with the most cynicism, doubt, and fear are the places where God waits to intentionally move towards us to restore, redeem, and heal. And as with Zechariah, we are invited to remember our deprivation is always invitation to pay attention to what we really believe about God, the chatter going on in our souls underneath the surface of doubt, cynicism, and despair, and reacquaint ourselves with the truth of God’s character and promises through His Word.

Using times of silence well is never easy. It takes continually showing up honestly before God telling Him the truth about where we’ve been, what we’ve done, how we are afraid, and what we actually think of Him. It takes courage to ask Him the questions that are always lurking right below the surface of our shaky faith.

And then it takes long amounts of time in God’s Word letting Him remind us of who He is and what He’s done to fulfill His promises to His people and to replace our fear with His love. This is done in the quiet of one-on-one times with God, and it’s also done in community with the people of God you trust and love.

The two great feasts on the church calendar, Advent and Lent, serve two different purposes in our lives. In his Advent liturgy book, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, Jonathon Gibson writes, “To be clear, the [Advent] season is not about what we can do for Christ by our work or prayers or fasting; rather, it is about what He has done for us in His work and prayers and fasting – a work that began in His first coming in humility and which will conclude in His second coming in glory.”

While Lent is for fasting, Advent is for feasting. We feast on the ways God came and comes to us. We remember His promises through the major and minor prophets, the psalms, and the Gospels, and then finally in Revelation. As we do so, His Word births internal restoration and revival in our souls.

The work of the enemy during the Christmas season is to sit us down at the wrong kind of feast. We spend the majority of our time feasting materially, but we are to primarily feast spiritually. It’s not that our gift-giving, meal-planning, and celebration-attending is all bad, it’s just that it leaves us empty, restless, and unfulfilled when it takes second-place to the feasting we do spiritually through God’s character, promises, and Word.

Feasting spiritually on Christ throughout the Advent season, making time to bless Him in our abundance and move towards Him in our pain won’t just happen naturally. It takes time, focus, intentionality, and planning. So take some time this weekend before the holiday season hits to think through purposeful times of silence and feasting on God:

• When and how will you create times of quiet to remember God’s Word?
• When will you sit down as a family to remember God’s Word?
• How will corporate worship take priority over other celebrations?
• As the year comes to a close or in the first few weeks of the new one beginning, when can you carve out time to take a personal retreat, even a few hours, to review God’s faithful love and draw on hope for His healing and immanence in the present?

I know times like this are hard to create and maintain; I’m right there with you in this battle, and I already know I will fail at perfectly executing the list I create. I will stay up too late, eat too much, say yes to too many things, and let secondary celebrations take over the first. But when that happens, I won’t despair but return as quickly as possible to the rhythms I know are healthy, good, and life-giving for my soul and for my family.

As we prepare to step into this Advent season, we must remember this: we cannot give to our families, our churches, our communities, or our co-workers, what we do not have. We cannot give joy or peace if we are constantly churning and internally restless. We cannot give hope if we do not believe deep down in the tender mercies and faithful character of our good God.

But we must remember this as well: God does not stand far away, ready and waiting to punish you for your doubt or take away His good gifts. He stands ready and waiting to move towards you, just as He did with Zechariah and Elizabeth. Your silence and loss this year serves as space to point your heart to the great gift of Jesus who always stands ready and waiting to forgive your sin, remove any barriers in your life to receiving His presence, heal your heart, and birth internal joy, revival, intimacy and trust in His presence and promises, no matter the realities of your circumstances.

This is the kind of God we serve.

All of your deprivation is simply invitation in the silence for Him to come.

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
Isaiah 9:6-7

To help you sit down at the feast of God’s promises that Christ came and He is coming again, consider joining me this Advent season in using Prepare the Way, my new Advent devotional.