Seeing Beyond the Veil

In order to know that God is your strength you cannot have myopic vision. When your vision is myopic you cannot see beyond your struggles, your disappointments or your failures. When your vision is myopic the solution to your problems is limited by finite resources. It takes two eyes in order to see width and height and depth, one eye open to the world around you but the other open to the spiritual world as well.

There was a golden alter that stood before the veil. Though the veil hid from sight the Holy of Holies, still twice daily a priest would carry the live coals from the sacrificial alter and carefully place them on the Alter of Incense. The people of the covenant believed that as the incense ascended an angel would carry their prayers before the throne of God. They could not see this with the eyes of flesh but only with the eyes of faith.

To be selected to burn the incense on the golden alter was a once-in-a-lifetime event for a priest. Zechariah had been chosen by lot. A whole multitude of people were praying outside at the hour of incense watching for the holy smoke that would signify that their prayers had been carried to God in His heavenly sanctuary. The petitions that they were bringing on this day reflected the very real needs that they had, burdens that broke them, grief that caused them to cry in the night. Through their prayers, they chose to look beyond their own weakness and call on the strength of their God.

To believe that an angel will carry your prayers before the throne of God is one thing, to see an angel standing in front of you is another thing entirely! Zechariah did see an angel and he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. Zechariah's name means "YHVH Has Remembered". The angel's message was that God had heard his prayers and that his wife Elizabeth would bear a son, who he was to call John. He was promised joy and gladness and was told that many would rejoice at his son's birth. But Zechariah had become accustomed to disappointment, what he had experienced in life had crushed him. His vision had been too often blurred by tears for him to see clearly. But the angel who stood before him was Gabriel. The Gabriel who stands in the presence of God had been sent to Zechariah to bring him good news.

When faith became sight and when he heard the cry of his long awaited son, Zechariah's tongue that had been muted was set free. Now he could see clearly the width and height and depth of the love of God. Filled with the Holy Spirit he spoke of, "the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and guide our feet into the way of peace."