Thou Shalt Be Dumb
“And, behold, thou shalt be dumb.” So spoke the Angel Gabriel to Zacharias after Zacharias expressed his disbelief at the glad tidings Gabriel brought to him as he served inside the temple. I know that Gabriel was using the technical sense of dumb, in that Zacharias would be unable to speak until his son was born, but I think that we could all read and apply this verse to ourselves using the more modern interpretation of the word to mean stupid or ignorant. We might all choose to take life a little less seriously and to stop worrying so much about what tomorrow will bring if we confront the hard truth that sometimes we shall be dumb. Neither a lifetime of experience, an extensive education, and a prominent position within the church and the community nor the presence of an angelic being prevented Zacharias from being dumb, so what hope do we have? The short answer is, none at all. None of us can reasonably expect to avoid being dumb most of the time. When each of us are born, we pass through a veil of forgetfulness and then enter a world to which we are maladapted and go from moment to moment making one dumb mistake after another. But that’s OK. God told each one of us before sending us to our mortal existence, “Behold, thou shalt be dumb...but I’m sending some help.” We were always meant to be remarkably, painfully, hopelessly dumb. But we were also always meant to have a Teacher, a Master, a Savior. We cannot be saved in ignorance, and Christ descended from Heaven, a realm full to bursting with knowledge and wisdom and intelligence, and dwelt among us dumb dumbs because He loves us. Even though we make stupid, idiotic decisions and run blindly into solid walls and drown in half inch puddles and in frustration kick the rock against which we just stubbed our toes, Christ loves us. And He sees, beneath all of the bad decisions and ignorance and dumbness, the spark of intelligence blazing brightly at our very center. Zacharias knew with every single one of his brain cells that the time for him and his wife to have a baby had well and truly passed. But this was dumb. Christ saved him from his ignorance and showed him that the world was far stranger and more wonderful than Zacharias could ever have imagined in all of his dumb ignorance. As long as we have the courage to admit that we are dumb and the wisdom to come unto and learn of and embrace our Savior Jesus Christ, we do not need to remain dumb. We can grow in knowledge and wisdom and grace and be saved from our ignorance.
