I love the songs of Christmas that Luke records for us in chapters 1 through 3. This Sunday at Grace Hill we are looking at Zechariah’s song in Luke 1:68-79. The lead up to this song is that he and his wife, Elizabeth, were some of God’s most faithful servants and yet Elizabeth had been denied the one thing that most women of her day longed for and were judged for … children. Luke makes it a point to tell the reader that, like Abraham and Sarah, they were well-advanced in their years, i.e., past child-conceiving, when Gabriel shows up to tell Zechariah that he is going to be a daddy. The very God who had sovereignly and wisely closed up Elizabeth’s womb was going to open it at this most illogical and il-biological (made up word). Gabriel tells Zechariah that “your prayer has been heard.” The implication of Gabriel proclamation (“your prayer has been heard”) is that Zechariah and Elizabeth have continued to pray for a child long after it was possible to conceive. Their enduring prayer life amazes me because I have the endurance of a hundred-yard dasher when it comes to prayer and they seem to have the endurance of an ironman triathlon. I don’t believe that they prayed God down so that he relented and gave them what they asked for, but through their prayers, God brought to fruition his good, wise and sovereign will at the right time.