Women of Christmas/Elizabeth
I looked back the other day to see if I picked a word for 2020. It says a lot about this year that I don’t even remember if I picked a word let alone what it was. Scrolling back through my Instagram, I found a post from the beginning of the year mentioning surrender. Then over and over again, my posts kept bringing up that word; surrender, surrender, surrender. Last week’s blog post was about surrender and its connection to rest. I guess I have been learning a thing or two about surrender this year and unintentionally surrender has been my word for 2020.
Surrendering doesn’t feel like it should be a new word, I have had big moments in my life of surrender. Surrender to God, surrender in marriage (you could call it compromise), surrender in work situations, home life, as a daughter, sister, parent, friend. Life is full of moments where we choose our battles and let go - surrender.
This year surrender and I have developed a different kind of relationship. In the past when confronted with the need to surrender I did so begrudgingly and often with a bad attitude. Surrender done in this way still brings about positive results but it feels terrible in the process. This year surrender and I have become comfortable with each other; we have become friends.
I have learned in 2020 surrender isn’t the enemy. My will is strong and having a strong will has benefitted me in my life in many ways; but when it comes to surrendering my will, my vision, the way I think is the best way for things to happen, my will has been difficult to bend. In the past months, my will has practiced over and over bending and in the bending I have become comfortable with this truth; there is a will and a way higher and better than mine.
I have written before about the difference between knowing something to be true and acting on that knowledge. We know God’s will and way are better than our own, yet it can be difficult to walk it out. We may surrender to him but our surrender may feel forced, marked by anxiety and even fear. Is this familiar to anyone other than me?
Like my girls who take any available opportunity to bend their bodies backwards to become more flexible, when we practice surrender we become more pliable in the hands of our Creator God. The action of surrender begins to hurt less and less and it may even become comfortable. Similar to gymnastics your body forgets the time it didn’t move in the new way you have been practicing. As we practice surrender it becomes natural.
This year while looking forward to Christmas I want to shine a light on some of the women who are vital parts of the first Christmas when Jesus came as a baby to the world; starting with Elizabeth. In the first chapter of Luke we meet Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah, the parents of John the Baptist. Zechariah was a Priest chosen by lot to go into the Holy of Hollies. An experience so revered a rope would have been tied to his ankle just in case he died while in the presence of the Most Holy God. All the people were standing outside the temple praying as Zechariah entered to light the incense and while in the Holy of Hollies he encounters an angel, a messenger of God.
This angel tells Zechariah his prayers have been answered, even though he and his wife are old he will have a son and not just any son, but a son who will be great in the sight of the Lord. Zechariah’s response? “How can I know this?” He didn’t ask the angel, how can this be (like Mary) or why me? (Like Moses) No, he says how can I know this, to which Gabriel responds with, because I am an angel standing before you in the temple of the Most High God and I told you so (my interpretation). Gabriel ends with a reprimand, because of Zechariah’s unbelief he won’t be able to speak.
I tell the fast version of Zechariah’s part of the story so we can contrast it with Elizabeth’s.
Infertility is painful for both men and women, but I think it is especially true for women. What we know of Elizabeth is she is married to Zechariah, from the Priestly line of Aaron, and she had no baby because she could not conceive.
How Elizabeth must have become friends with surrender, surrender to God even though her life didn’t go how she envisioned it. She must have learned through practice over years of watching everyone around her grow their families to bend her will to God’s, even though her bending had to have been painful as she came to terms with the reality she was not able to have children.
After Zechariah’s encounter in the temple, he came out unable to speak, finished his duties and went home. I am sure he wrote out his experience in the temple to Elizabeth, along with some really good charades. Three days after he returned home the Bible tells us she became pregnant and kept herself in seclusion for 5 months.
I lost a baby at 20 weeks in between our third and fourth girls. When I became pregnant with Ella, my heart was tender, I told no one I was pregnant; it was my secret. To believe and have hope after such a loss was a test of my faith. Elizabeth had experienced a life time of loss. She may have lost babies, we don’t know, but she definitely had mourned dreams and hopes; grieved the life she had wanted but didn’t have.
Elizabeth also kept the news of her pregnancy to herself for the first 5 months and in verse 25 we get a glimpse into her heart of faith, trust and surrender to God. She says,
“The Lord has done this for me. He has looked with favor in these days to take away my disgrace among the people”.
Elizabeth had leaned into surrender, had leaned into trust in her faithful God. She knew who she was in his eyes and now he was showing his love for her by taking away her disgrace among the people. I can’t help but look at Zechariah, in God’s temple, with an angel sent from God directly telling him an amazing message and his heart was skeptical and questioned. Then in contrast, we have Elizabeth, barren, and accepting the promise of God in quiet humility and security. Her belief wasn’t aided by any of the fanfare Zechariah experienced, yet it was total and immediate.
Elizabeth got to carry a baby who, even in her womb, was filled with the Holy Spirit. Can you imagine? What intimacy with God was cultivated in her life through surrender to be used by God to carry John the Baptist, the one who prepared people’s hearts for the coming Son of God and Savior of the world. Elizabeth was also one of the first to meet the Son of God, Jesus, when he was still in Mary’s womb. She spent precious time with Mary during the beginning of her pregnancy, I can only imagine the beautiful mentor relationship between Aunt Elizabeth and Niece Mary, both of them carrying miracles, used by God.
When we become flexible in surrender we are moldable for what God wants to do in and through our lives. When we choose to trust a will bigger and better than our own we get to see his miracles lived out in front of our eyes, we get to be a part of the bigger plan being worked out in, around and through us.
To be individuals who are part of changing a culture where people are not honored for their humanity but instead valued for what they produce, the color of their skin, their family origins, how they look or what they accomplish we must lean into the practice of surrender. We must bend our wills, our understanding, be willing to move in a different way than we are accustomed to so we can see God work in and around us and join him in that work. When we do this, we get to be a part of the culture shift our communities need for healing and redemption to be experienced.
2020 has taught me surrender is freeing. Bending my will makes me more flexible, more beautiful. Anxiety so often accompanied by unknown has been replaced by peace and rest knowing my will is safe as I bend it to God’s.
Elizabeth is a beautiful example of surrender and what a life of surrender, even in painful circumstances, can produce; intimacy with God and a place at the table where He is at work.
More than anything in my life I want a front row seat to see what God is doing in this generation. If habitually bending my will to God’s is what it will take, I will continue to live in surrender.