Monday 3rd January - Luke 1

We begin!

You can read Luke 1 here - Luke 1

Tom writes:

Luke wrote to us. The Holy Spirit breathed upon Luke’s brain and Luke’s quill to show us how God came close in Jesus to usher common people into God’s uncommonly amazing plans. These “birth narrative” chapters of Luke assure us that our God of Promise will keep every promise. He will send out his Messengers to invite us in. He will even invade barren wombs if the owner of them is willing. This is the bare-faced-cheek of our faith and the thing that we must doggedly cling to - that the angelic visitations and the miracles, the life interruptions and prophetic declarations are not just fleeting fancies from a fairy tale Nativity story but are what God did back in history and are what God is doing right now. God comes close to draw undeserving common people into his uncommonly amazing plans.

Luke is determined that you know how carefully he has thought about this - Dr Luke who would have known what careful was. He wants you to know that in the midst of this oppressive and struggling world God, the boss, can still be relied upon to accomplish all he desires... as long as you let him. Zechariah nearly missed it, he initially assumed that his situation was one of those exceptions that God can’t change. But the mercy of God was strong enough to drag him under God’s blessing and he became the father of the locust-eater; the greatest of all born men. It took a long stint of silence for God to drag him around and I think sometimes it can be in our silence where God can most awaken us to his plans. Sometimes our hidden assumptions and silent settling needs to be swept away in God’s silence before we can fully enjoy the fruit of God’s faithfulness. And so we start this journey by asking whether we will allow God to lead us on it - wherever he may go. 

Question for reflection:

Are there any areas of your life that you - like Zechariah - have assumed God’s goodness will not touch?