December 22

His Father Wrote It Down

The people who came to circumcise the boy on the eighth day already knew what he would be called. It would be Zechariah, after his father. That is the ordinary and honourable way to name a son. His father's name goes down another generation with him, and the family holds its line.

His mother, Elizabeth, answered that he would be called John. That did not settle it, and they put the question to his father in signs. He had not spoken since the angel met him in the temple.

He asked for a writing tablet and wrote the same name she had just given. Both parents named the boy John, and neither of them named him what the gathering had come expecting. They all marvelled. Then his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he spent his new speech on God.

On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they meant to call him Zechariah, after his father. His mother answered, "No, he will be called John." They made signs to his father, asking what he wanted him called. He asked for a writing tablet and wrote, "His name is John." They all marvelled. Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he spoke, blessing God.

And you, child, will be called a prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the dawn from on high will visit us, to shine on those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death; to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Luke 1:59-60, 62-64, 76, 78-79

Later in the passage the father turns and talks to the baby. This is a second thing the boy will be called, and it comes with a description attached: a prophet of the Most High. He will go before the face of the Lord, and his job is to prepare that Lord's ways.

Everything the father says about his son here is measured by somebody else. His title names God. The direction he takes is set by the one he goes in front of, and the ways he makes ready are not his own. Someone has to go first, and going first is work in its own right.

The father traces all of it back to the tender mercy of God. That is where the dawn in his song comes from, and it is what he sets under the child's life while the child is still too young to be asked whether he wants it.

A meal you cook and hardly taste is preparation. So is a room you set right for people who will never know it was wrong. The good of both lands on somebody else, and other hands finish it. That is what you are for today. Zechariah put his son's assignment on God's mercy and said so out loud over a boy who could not answer him yet. The same mercy holds up whatever you have been given to do.

Lord, thank you for a place in something whose centre is you. Keep me at the work of today. Your mercy is the reason any of it is mine.