These are familiar accounts of the births of John the Baptist and Jesus. One of the things that the text spoke to me today was the juxtaposition in the text of the disbelief of Zechariah versus the belief of Mary. There is no doubt that Luke is intentionally showing us the contrast, but why?
It is interesting that a pious, learned, mature man would doubt the words of an angel of God in the Holy Place of the Temple. Gabriel probably felt like saying, "I came all the way here to see if you would fall for my scam!"
Yet, a 13 year old girl would believe that she would become pregnant by the Holy Spirit - and then praise God.
Too many times, we put God into a box of our own making and think that He must act in such and such a way. This is really a form of idolatry - making a god out of our own fancy. Zechariah must have had some construct of the coming of Elijah and the birth of a son to him "in the spirit of Elijah" just didn't fit in. Sometimes, our study and "speculation" gets in the way of letting God be God.
We need to know the Scripture well and hold them fast. We should do our best to interpret them and hold our interpretations with a good sense of humility - we could be wrong! Too many church splits occur between factions who are positive about their particular interpretations of Scripture. There are clear and important dogmas of the faith that we should be willing to go to the mat for - like what must I do to be saved. But there are many other doctrines, that we must hold a bit lightly - like the end times. A mature godly believer knows which are which. Other closed minded know-it-alls which make every one of their interpretations of the Bible - dogma - do much harm to the cause of Christ.
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