The author of Eugene Peterson’s Biography “A Burning In My Bones”, described the author in a amazing way I had never considered, he said that, “He had a conversational intimacy with the scriptures.” That’s IT!!

That’s exactly the feeling of passages like the beginning of Luke that we study time and again, as my dear friend and poet said when I describes that to him, it’s like Simon & Garfunkel’s Song, “The Sound of Silence”… I wrote my own lyric to get closer to how I feel…

“Christmas Scripture my old Friend,

I’ve come to walk with You again,

because the vision quite revealing,

left it’s seeds while I was studying,

and the vision that was planted in my heart,

It can’t depart,

within the arms of Jesus.”

Robby’s Rendition of The Sound of Silence by Paul Simon

Here are some of the nuggets I have gleaned this year.

  1. Luke 1:3 – Luke is writing all this and the book of acts to Theophilus, (friend of God) in Greek. Perhaps he is writing it to me and all friends of God. In Hebrew the word friend is the root of the word Shepherd – just sayin.
  2. After 400 years of Silence a long time and a big deal and exactly ten times longer than 40 years in the wilderness. God first speaks to a Priest, Zechariah, in the Temple, next to the Alter of incense and his name happens to be a Prophet’s name that means, “Remembered by God” and he is married to Elisheba, the same name as Aaron’s wife the first High Priest, and her name is “God Has Sworn”. God tells them to name their son, Johanon, “God Bringing Grace” very, very connected to comfort/ Isaiah 40 and comfort and even Noah him-self’s name is related,the first grace finder.
  3. Elisheba gets a VISIT from God not unlike Sarah, (Gen 21:1) in her old age,as does Mary. The Word “visit” is the same as Jesus would offer from the cross as did the Psalmist, (Into Your Hands I commit my Spirit), very related to coming under God’s Authority.
  4. Later John’s dad prophesied, much of Isaiah 40.
  5. Aaron himself is described in Jewish traditional literature as the greatest marriage counselor of all time and such that the overwhelming next generation had the name Aaron as he had saved so many marriages that they named sons after him. Note One: that is what a priest really is on all sorts of levels a marriage counselor as that is our union with God and the basis of our families. Note 2: Elisheba must have been an amazing wife for him to have a foundqtion of marriage counseling.