Key Passage: Luke 1

Questions are powerful.

They exist on a wide spectrum. In a classroom, a student might ask, “What format should the paper be in?” At a coffee shop, a friend leans across the table and asks, “How has this week been for you?” A mother kneels to meet her child’s eyes and asks, “Are you feeling tired?”

Questions can also wound. A sarcastic, passive-aggressive “Are you even paying attention?” carries a very different weight. The same tool can build trust or quietly tear it down. Depending on how they are asked, questions can open a heart or close it.

These questions are not merely about information. They are invitations—keys that can unlock understanding, connection, and care.

Questions are diagnostic, not only for the one being asked, but for the one asking. Like a two-sided mirror, they reveal posture on both sides. They invite us to peer through a window of understanding, offering an unfolding glimpse into the mystery of a person.

Luke 1 shows us what happens when this power is placed in the hands of God. Jesus Christ demonstrated this perfectly. He asked questions constantly, not because He lacked information, but to invite others to look more closely at themselves, their faith, and their God, while also revealing something of Himself. In this first chapter, we see this dynamic in seed form, a small glimpse of the way God will guide, reveal, and invite hearts. It is here that we meet Zachariah and Mary and see how God responds to their questions.

Luke introduces us to two very different people, both facing impossible circumstances, both receiving astonishing news, and both asking the same question: “How?” At first glance, we might expect the same response. After all, the question is identical.

But the immediate outcomes are not.

Why does God respond differently to the same question? And what might that reveal about the way we bring our own questions to Him?

Luke 1 opens a window into two hearts, two questions, and the God who meets them both. Zachariah and Mary were both visited by the angel Gabriel and given life altering news. Both would become parents. Luke seems to invite us to notice the similarities before we notice the differences. Both were receiving impossible news.

A Question Worn by Time

Zachariah had been waiting a long time. He was advanced in years, and his wife Elizabeth had passed the season when bearing a child was possible. For years, they had prayed. And for years, the answer they wanted had not come. Over time, they likely let that hope go.

Then, in a once in a lifetime moment, as Zachariah burned incense, God met him there. In that holy place, Gabriel appeared, almost as if God had been waiting for Zachariah and for this moment as long as Zachariah had been waiting for God.

Gabriel announced that Elizabeth would bear a son, a son who would prepare the way for the Messiah.

The promise Zachariah had longed for finally arrived, and it was greater than he could have imagined. Zachariah had asked for a son, and God was giving him a son and a prophet. Yet in that moment, worn by waiting and callused by disappointment, Zachariah asked his “How” not with wonder, but with skepticism.

“How shall I know this?”

His question revealed his heart in an instant. Years of waiting had quietly reshaped the way he saw God, not toward deeper trust, but toward guarded hope. To hope is to make oneself vulnerable, especially in uncertainty, and Zachariah had begun to wonder if it was still safe to do that with God, or if it was wiser to keep his heart protected. He may not have realized how guarded his hope had become until his question gave it voice.

Fear and doubt had eroded Zachariah’s ability to joyfully receive the very fulfillment he had long prayed for. And so God responded not by withdrawing His promise, and not with an explanation, but by silencing Zachariah. In love, He disciplined.

A Question Born by Wonder

Unlike Zachariah, Mary was not in the temple when Gabriel appeared to her. She was going about ordinary life when the angel brought a similar announcement. She would bear a child, the Messiah.

Mary faced not old age or barrenness, but her own kind of impossibility. She had never been with a man, and by every human measure, there was no way for her to conceive. This was not what she had expected. Her life with Joseph had not even truly begun. Though Mary had not spent years waiting for this promise, the rest of her life was about to change. She would soon be pregnant without ever having been married, carrying a future she did not plan.

In that moment, Mary asked her “How.”

“How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

In an instant, her heart was revealed. What spilled out was not fear or shame, but belief. She trusted that God would not bring her harm, but only good. She believed that whatever He was doing, He would be faithful and true.

And so God, through Gabriel, answered Mary’s question directly. In love, He guided her.

Questions in the Hands of God

We might be tempted to think that God does not welcome questions, but when Mary’s question is placed beside Zachariah’s, we see that cannot be true. God does not rebuke Mary for asking. Instead, He answers her. And if we keep reading Luke 1, we see what is produced.

Mary, filled with awe, sings a song we now call the Magnificat.

Then, at the very end of the chapter, when John the Baptist is born, Zachariah’s voice is restored. And what does he do? He declares praise. Perhaps not in a melody, but no less a song of worship.

God takes two servants, facing two impossibilities, carrying two very different hearts, and leads them both to the same place: worship. Both came to a place of joy. 

Their questions did not reveal anything new to God. He already knew their hearts. But their questions revealed something to themselves. God used each question, in deeply personal ways, to guide them where they needed to go. Not away from Him, but toward Him.

This is the God we love. A God who is safe to ask questions. A God who listens closely. A God who can take even poorly asked questions, even questions shaped by fear or unbelief, and patiently turn them into praise. God knew exactly what Zachariah needed to be freed from unbelief and finally sing again.

And don’t we long for that too. To be light enough, free enough, to sing. This is the hope of Christmas, God has come to be man in order to set us free from sin, guilt, and shame.

So, friend, bring your questions to God. Pay attention to the questions you ask, because they reveal where your heart is resting. Trust that God, in His kindness, will meet you there and lead you gently toward worship. Christmas reminds us that this is what Jesus came to do. It is what the believer is headed toward: freedom, peace, joy, and worship. Now in part, and one day, in whole.

If you find yourself wrestling with questions, do not fear them. Instead, cling to His tender mercy. Remember Zachariah’s final words, spoken after silence, after waiting, after doubt:

“Because 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, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

How?

The question arises

from hearts that tremble

before the impossible.

–

A priest asks,

worn by waiting,

fearful to hope,

seeking proof

before belief.

–

A girl asks,

young and yielding,

open to wonder,

believing first,

seeking the way next.

–

Both chosen.

Both loved.

Both small beneath glory.

–

One falls silent

beneath love that disciplines.

One steps forward

beneath love that guides.

–

Both barren,

wait for His Word

that cannot fail.

–

And together,

Emmanuel

turns their “how’s”

into songs.

–

O servant of the Lord,

He invites us to ask “how,”

but with the belief

that He will.

–

For every uncertain “how,”

brought to Him,

is a song being written

and awaits to be sung.

-Kassie McDowell