Advent week 2: Peace

This may be the most famous Christmas prophecy of all, sung every year in Handel’s Messiah. Isaiah gives the promised child four names, and each one tells you something. Wonderful, Counsellor: he knows what you need. The mighty God: he is strong enough to help. The everlasting Father: he cares for you without end. The Prince of Peace: he brings peace where there is none. Notice too that the child is given. Peace with God isn’t something we earn. It comes as a gift, in the most unlikely package of all, a baby.

Zacharias was an old priest who had prayed for a child for years. He and his wife Elisabeth had grown old without one, and they had probably stopped expecting an answer. Then, while he served in the temple, an angel appeared with the news: thy prayer is heard. Their son would be John the Baptist, who would prepare the way for Jesus. God’s timing rarely matches ours, and a long silence can feel like a no. But Zacharias’s story shows that God hears prayers, even when the answer is slow in coming.

Mary was a young woman engaged to a carpenter in Nazareth, a town with no reputation at all. When the angel Gabriel appeared, she was troubled, and his first words were meant to calm her: Fear not. Then came news that would change her life and the world. She would bear a son and call him JESUS, a name that means the LORD saves. Mary had questions, and she asked them. But the angel’s message began with God’s favor, not her worthiness. The same is true for us. God’s plans for us begin with his grace.

Mary’s answer to Gabriel is one of the bravest sentences in the Bible. She knew what an unexpected pregnancy could cost her: her reputation, her engagement, perhaps much more. Still she said, be it unto me according to thy word. She didn’t have every answer. She had God’s word, and she chose to trust it. Few of us will face anything like Mary’s calling. But we all face moments when God’s way and our plans don’t line up. Advent invites us to pray her prayer: Lord, let it be as you say.

Joseph is easy to overlook in the Christmas story, but he faced a painful choice. His fiancée was pregnant, and he knew the child wasn’t his. Matthew says he was a just man who decided to end the engagement quietly, to spare Mary public shame. Then God spoke to him in a dream: fear not. Joseph woke up and obeyed, taking Mary as his wife and raising Jesus as his own. He never speaks a single recorded word in the Gospels, yet his quiet obedience protected the Savior. Faithfulness doesn’t have to be loud to matter.

When his son John was born, Zacharias, who had been unable to speak for months because he doubted the angel, finally opened his mouth, and what came out was a song. He ends it with a sunrise, the dayspring from on high, breaking over people who sit in darkness. Then the light does something practical: it guides our feet into the way of peace. Peace isn’t only a feeling we wait to have. It’s a path we can walk, one step at a time, by the light God gives.

This psalm was written by people who had come home from exile and were asking God to restore them. Verse 10 is a beautiful picture: mercy and truth meeting, righteousness and peace kissing each other. Usually these seem to pull in opposite directions. Truth exposes what’s wrong, and mercy covers it. Righteousness demands what’s right, and peace wants everyone to get along. At Christmas they finally meet in one person. In Jesus, God doesn’t ignore what’s wrong, and he doesn’t give up on us either. That is why his peace is real.