You're serving your time in Jerusalem as a priest, probably the last time you will have this opportunity as you are now in the later season of life. You fully expect to go home shortly when your time is finished to your beloved wife. The two of you have done all you could to follow after God in spite of the great disappointment in your life, you've had no children and you are both well past the time for this. For you it is a lonely ache but you know for Elizabeth it has been a disgrace she's borne with great dignity. You really are ready to go home.
The day comes and you are chosen by lot to be the priest to offer the annual sacrifice for sin. You are honored as you thought you would never have the opportunity to do this. Few ever have this honor. This has to feel like the "pinnacle" of your priestly life, your whole life, and you vow to fulfill the duties with all the humility and honor the task demands. After this act, you think your life is over, fulfilled as fully as possible.
Oh but God has other plans and frankly I think He must have laughed a bit about what was coming to Zechariah and Elizabeth, two people too old for what was coming. I also have no problem understanding Zechariah's response to Gabriel's announcement, I think I would have responded similarly. I am probably close to the age he was when told he's going to have a son. He couldn't possibly imagine such a thing would come to his lonely household so he questioned the announcement.
I am also amused that he is struck silent until John is born. He now had plenty of time to contemplate how very different his life would become, thoughts only heard by God. Perhaps his first month was a silent bargaining with God until he finally came to rest and nestle into a silent initmacy with this God he'd served his entire life.
When the day finally arrived that this baby boy was to be named his tongue is finally loosened and out flows confirmation of John's name and a prophecy over his son that rings through to this day.
He thought his life would be over after the "pinnacle" of being chosen that day to offer the sacrifice but God had another idea, another life to come from those two, Elizabeth and Zechariah.
I identify with this man in so many ways. I've had days when I felt I'd squandered too many years, stumbled along with a job that really was no "career" with little satisfaction; that I'd contributed little to the Kingdom. But just as a new life was to flow from Elizabeth and Zechariah, we are offered a new life as well. For me that is part of Christmas, God with us.
This "God with us" means my life is fused with His. My days, no matter how many I have, begin in a manger in a cave-barn. I am once again swept into the deep mystery of God bundled in a baby and my life beginning again this Advent season.
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