Many people can’t stand Christmas. This is not because they are Scrooges, but because the year before, and perhaps a few before that, is not getting a five-star rating. Perhaps it’s not even getting one. It’s only getting half a star because you’re still standing.

There’s a song from Matthew West’s 2024 album called Unashamed. Towards the start of the song it has this lyric:

And Daniel met a lion
Because he chose to pray
But You shut the mouth of that lion
And he walked out the next day

It’s talking about Daniel in the lion’s den. If you’re not familiar with that account you can find it in the Old Testament, in Daniel 6.

But the song lyrics raise a good point. In the song it appears that if you’re praying the right way in the first place, you will get the outcome you want and when you want it.

If only that were the case.

I can think of multiple times when I have prayed something – and consistently so – for years and years, and the opposite happens.

How is a person supposed to interpret that? They didn’t pray enough? Did they say the right words? Are they good enough or righteous enough? Why didn’t prayer and fasting work? Surely if you’re doing it with the right heart and committing it to God he will hear you?

When it comes to the nativity and prayers seemingly not being heard, Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist, are definite candidates. In the opening paragraphs of Luke’s gospel we are introduced to their plight:

In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.

Now, Zechariah and Elizabeth aren’t any of your très moderne SINKS and DINKS who are very happy being childless. A few sentences later this becomes clear when Zechariah is spoken to by an angel:

Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John.

Zechariah had obviously been praying.

And I’m going to take an educated guess and say that so had Elizabeth. In fact – just quietly putting it out there – I reckon she’d been praying more than Zechariah.

Because quite frankly, it’s all she’s got available to her in a society in which there’s only one thing she supposed to do and she can’t even manage to do that.

I also think she was praying so very much because towards the end of the account it reports this about Zechariah, who was at the temple when he saw the angel:

When his time of service was completed, he returned home.After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favour and taken away my disgrace among the people.”

Elizabeth had had more than her fair share of half-star years. She knows what it’s like to fail and feel shame. She knows how to be a social pariah. In fact, perhaps she feels like that’s all she knows.

Where is her dignity in a society like that?

And I think there’d be plenty of women saying that not much has changed these days, especially in church culture. If that hasn’t been your experience, praise the Lord for that.

In my experience when some people find out that I’m a “professional woman” they basically go running into hiding. This is because a professional woman is terrifying.

Apparently.

A childless woman in the church struggles to be treated as a normal human. It’s like she’s non-human. A monster.

I really wish I didn’t relate to Elizabeth in the nativity, but unfortunately I do.

“In these days he has shown his favour and taken away my disgrace among the people.”

Those are loaded words. Don’t skip over them too quickly.

Whatever your prayers may be this December, Matthew West’s entire album is called Don’t Stop Praying.

Even if it feels like it’s worthless, as I’m sure it did for Zechariah and Elizabeth, you can join me in continuing to pray, trusting that maybe, just maybe, God is listening.

Yours still praying,

Alison