[Transcript of video]

I am Rev. Elder Troy Treash bringing you greetings from my home in Houston, Texas in the United State on behalf of the Elders Council to wish you a meaningful Advent and a Merry Christmas this Season. This is the first of some devotions to prepare us for Christmas to prepare us for Christmas with a theme of Messengers – messengers of hope, messengers of peace, messengers of joy, and messengers of love. Where we will focus on the angelic messengers that intrude into the world as we know it as we head toward Christmas.

The world as they knew it was a place of occupation, a place of Roman Empire, a place where they had made their bargains with what was going on so that they could still worship, they could still go to the Temple. But they were not a free people in that time and that place God intervenes through these messengers and in Jesus to change the world to become incarnate, to free us and bring us salvation.

What happens in this particular story, the angel Gabriel finds Zechariah at his once in a lifetime opportunity. He has won the lottery for the priests and is able to go into the Holy of Holies to make an offering. This is something you might get to do once in a lifetime and it is his turn. He might be a little apprehensive. He knows that people, some of them at least, have judged him and his wife Elizabeth and him for being a barren couple. Without children somehow God must be judging him. And people aren’t always kind in that regard, so Zechariah wants to take this opportunity no matter what people say about him to be faithful to God. In doing so he meets the angel Gabriel who tells him you are going to have a son, and you and Elizabeth are going to have a boy. His name will be John, and he will bring people back to their faith.

And Zechariah is amazed and says well Elizabeth and I are pretty old. The angel Gabriel says well you are not done yet, and God can use old to help change the world. In so doing Zechariah’s questions create a response from Gabriel so that he is then mute until John is born.

What kind of messenger will you be this Advent Season? What kind of hope will you bring? Will you bring hope to the barren? Hope to the elderly? Will you bring hope to a world under occupation? Will you bring the hope of healing? Will you bring hope? We ask you, “What kind of messenger are you?