Come Follow Me: Lesson 1

Imagine this: you're a high priest, you're in the temple to do a sacred ceremony, and suddenly you find an angel of God standing to the side of the altar. Pretty cool huh?

Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, found himself in just such a spot.

Now to be clear, this is a man that was described as just and good. This is the man that God the Father saved for such an elevated calling. Out of the billions of spirits that have lived on earth, God chose this man to be the father of John the Baptist. I expect that he must have been chosen for this calling because he was more than extraordinary.  How amazing would it be simply to have lived in this place, in this generation, and just see the Savior in the flesh?

So despite of all of that praise, here's Zacharias. Temple, altar, messenger. The messenger tells him that he will be the father to one of the most influential men ever to stand on the earth, and that his aged wife will have that baby. Maybe she's 60ish? 80ish? Who knows? The scripture says she's "stricken" with age.

And how does he respond? It's not in the category of "I'm so humbled and awestruck that I am seeing a messenger from God", and it's not "I can't fathom that I will be the father of such an amazing person", and it's not even "I'm so grateful that my wife, at her age, can be given a child". It was (according to the scripture account) "How can I believe you? She's old!"

Yo - Zacharias. It's God the Father. You know - miracles, all powerful, creator of the universe - that sort of thing.

It's easy to dump on Zacharias. For that moment, he chose doubt rather than faith, and was stricken with the inability to speak. But he was a great man, and if he's that great, where does that leave the rest of us? Will we doubt a spiritual manifestation? Or perhaps a better question is this: how often do we doubt or ignore a spiritual manifestation? And when we do, is our own soul made unable to speak in some way for some period of time?

The same thing with his wife, but perhaps to a lesser degree. The Lord's messenger tells her that she's about to give birth to John the Baptist! Her response? Oh good! Now I'll not be embarrassed about being barren any more!!

It's a bit bigger than that.

How often do we get to buried in our own routine that we fail to make room for divine intervention? How often do we ignore it because it's not part of our schedule?

And the biggie for the Jews - the thing that sent them over the edge, and made them marvel? It was that Zacharias and his wife decided to name their son John. This absolutely broke all rules. None of their ancestors was named John. You can't do that. You just can't. It's a rule - somewhere. This overwhelming break of tradition must have caused them to go full melt down.

We have traditions too. We have assumptions about how things should be. We have a prophet that's changing things, and indicating to us that just because something has been the routine, that doesn't mean it's eternal truth.

There are things to learn here: first is to listen for divine guidance, and then do what we're told, when we're told it. Right now. Even if it's un-routine or uncomfortable. In other words, if the message comes from God, that trumps all other factors. Even if it might be awkward to do it.

The second is that we don't know as much as we think we do. Traditions, assumptions, and general "knowledge" are not necessarily eternal truth - they're just traditions. We have to learn to separate out procedures from principles. That's hard - it requires us to be close to the Lord so we can know the difference.

May we grow within ourselves so we can have those divine messenger moments. May we gain the companionship of the Lord and his messengers on this side of the veil, as well as after this life. I can testify that it's worth it.