Waiting: Day 21

Saturday December 20, 2025

And they made signs to his father, inquiring what he wanted him to be called.

And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” And they all wondered.

Luke 1:62,63, English Standard Version

Zechariah ain’t no dummy. He’s not disobeying Gabriel's orders, and he doesn’t leave his wife hanging out to dry. He grabs a pencil and lays down the law-the kid will be named John, and that settles it.

But Luke tells us that “they all wondered.” That’s the neighbors, the same folks who figured it was their job to name the baby in the first place, the very same people who argued with Elizabeth. My first thought is that this is just another example of them being a bunch of busybodies, you know, walking away murmuring about how strange Zechariah is, maybe whispering stuff like, “Well, you know, they always have been an odd sort of a couple.”

That’s likely at least some of it, but I think there’s more to it. Digging a little deeper, we learn that John means “God is gracious” in Hebrew. Jews of the day placed great importance on names, so perhaps they saw John as an affirmation of God’s grace to Zechariah and Elizabeth. These two weren’t really considered to be next up for a baby, right?

Hindsight allows us a better vantage to see that, of course, the whole thing is wrapped up in God’s grace. They likely understood it better when Zechariah is suddenly able to talk again (Luke 1:64). The old boy started “blessing God,” and whatever it was exactly that he said, it created quite a stir. “Fear came on all their neighbors,” verse 65 tells us, and then it goes on to say that the news spread like wildfire. The whole hill country was talking about it.

Ultimately, people went from merely talking about it to pondering it. Verse 66 says that people, upon hearing these things, “laid them up in their hearts.” That’s the pondering part, which led them to a question-What then will this child be? (v. 66).

“That boy’s gonna be something special! Reckon what he’ll do?” They really had no clue, did they? But Luke reminds us why little John is going to grow up to do great things. “For the hand of the Lord was with him,” he says in verse 66. And so, it was.