57 When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. 58 Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy.
59 On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, 60 but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.”
61 They said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who has that name.”
62 Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. 63 He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is John.” 64 Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God. 65 All the neighbors were filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. 66 Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, “What then is this child going to be?” For the Lord’s hand was with him.
Zechariah’s Song
67 His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:
68 “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has come to his people and redeemed them.
69 He has raised up a horn[c] of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David
70 (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
71 salvation from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us—
72 to show mercy to our ancestors
and to remember his holy covenant,
73 the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
74 to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable us to serve him without fear
75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
76 And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
77 to give his people the knowledge of salvation
through the forgiveness of their sins,
78 because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
79 to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
80 And the child grew and became strong in spirit[d]; and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.
"And he grew and became strong in spirit and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel."
What must that have been like for Elizabeth and Zechariah? Their long awaited and miraculous son, of whom so much was expected, became and unwashed weird-o, living in the wilderness, eating bugs and wearing sack cloth. In the deepest parts of their hearts, in the dark silence of their bedroom, they whispered their disappointment and heartbreak.
Al children disappoint their parents. Even Barach Obama probably disappointed his mom: "Why couldn't you get Universal Healthcare done? We have to give our children space to be who they have imagined for themselves, and to journey to that person through the wilderness of their own choices. It is hard, I wish my kids were all bankers and doctors and lived in the same town, state or even time zone at me. But they have worked hard to become who they are, they earned their lives, just as I did mine. I miss them but I raised them to be themselves and I should be and am grateful for the wonderful humans they have become.
We live in a time (it may be no different from other times, maybe we always think this is the worst), when oxycontin and heroin and alcohol and crack cocaine turn the barely baked brains of our beloved and miraculous children into mush. The potential that we saw in them ebbs away. They live in the wilderness and eat bugs and wear sack cloth.
Not many of these babies are prophets of the most high. But we have to believe that God can still work through them. Even if it is just to fill us with enough rage to seek a solution to addiction disease. We have to believe that God has not abandoned them, even if, for reasons of our own safety, we have to build boundaries around them.
Parents judge their children. That is the fact. But at some point we have to see them not as our children but as grown adults, independent people, God's hands and feet, set aside how we failed them and look at how God worked in them. And be proud.
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