When the Lord told Zachariah his wife "stricken with years" was going to have a baby, essentially he told the Lord, yeah right, I don't think so. The Lord promptly shut him up for a while until he believed it.
How many times do I do the same thing? Someone commented in Sunday School today about how Zachariah was a very faithful man, a priest for many years in the temple, and he and his wife had been praying for a child for years and were never blessed with one. So what did he do when he was told he would receive this blessing? He murmured and didn't believe it. This same person went on to comment - do we sometimes murmur at the blessings we receive from the Lord and consider them just another mundane thing or even a trial? Of course the conversation steered toward receiving blessings, but not in the way we anticipated.
I remember praying to know what to do with my life, going to the temple, fasting, waiting patiently, and when the Lord finally told me to go back to school and be a teacher I said, yeah right, I don't think so. Eventually I listened, it took me another entire year, but it has been one of the greatest blessings in my life. I remember feeling the exact same way I received the inspiration to go back to school while working to get my master's degree, again, yeah right, I don't think so.
Today's lesson was a good reminder the Lord knows best. People talked about how we all have times when life is not at all what we expected it to be. And that is not just for those of us who have prayed to be able to get married and haven't, or like Zachariah and Elizabeth, prayed for a child and weren't able to. We all face unexpected lives, but are we sometimes frowning at our blessings?
I had to have a little laugh to myself, maybe when I eventually find my husband, a blessing I have long been waiting for, it will be in a way totally unexpected, to someone totally unexpected. Will I be ready to receive it, or say, yeah right, I don't think so.
