Zechariah and Elizabeth did everything right. Luke says both were 6"righteous before God, walking blamelessly." Then, in the next breath, he names what that faithfulness had not bought: 7"they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren." Luke sets the two facts side by side. Obedience had not spared them decades of private ache.
Then Zechariah's turn at the altar arrives. Priests were assigned their duties by lot, and this time he was 9"chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense" while the people prayed outside. In the most important moment of his service, an angel stops him: 13"Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard." Luke does not say which prayer. It may have been the nation's, or an old request for a child, and the promise that follows answers at least the second one: Elizabeth will bear a son. Some prayers are heard long before they are answered.
The son will go before the Lord 17"in the spirit and power of Elijah." Zechariah has just heard the best news of his life, and his response is a question: 18"How shall I know this?" He asks for proof, and he backs the request with a fact the angel can hardly have missed, that he and his wife are old. Zechariah is no scoffer. He is a priest, in the temple, standing in front of an angel, and the promise still feels too large. Gabriel answers with his rank: 19"I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God." The sign Zechariah receives is silence, 20"because you did not believe my words." The priest who should have blessed the waiting crowd comes out unable to speak.
The silence reads as discipline, and it also hands Zechariah months with nothing to do except turn the promise over. Gabriel says he will be mute "until the day that these things take place," and when his voice returns later in the chapter, it comes back as praise.
Elizabeth speaks last. She conceives and keeps herself hidden for five months, and then she says what she thinks of the whole long wait: 25"Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people." She names what God did. Elizabeth had carried that reproach in public, among neighbors who could count the years, and her sentence gives the long wait its meaning after the fact. The priest trained in Scripture stumbled at the promise, and the woman who had carried the shame says simply that the Lord looked on her.
The God who is about to do the impossible does not need our confidence to do it. If you have stopped expecting an answer to something you asked long ago, hear the angel's sentence as a word for you. Your prayer has been heard, and the timing is his.
Prayer
Father, thank you for the prayers you have already heard, even the ones so old we have half forgotten praying them. Forgive us for asking for proof when you have already spoken plainly. When your answer comes in your time and in a shape we did not expect, let us meet it with praise. Let us say with Elizabeth that you have looked on us. In Jesus' name, amen.