Fruitful Drought

Luke 1:5–25

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• they were both righteous before God
• they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren
• your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John
• how shall I know this? For I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years

Applying the Word to My Life:
I have been blessed to have some times in my life where I have felt extremely close to Christ. Those moments are great – being able to just feel His presence close to me, feeling aligned in my mission and just everything being good. Right now is not one of those times. It isn't the first and it won't be the last. But if I'm going to be honest, it just isn't great.

In the past, these times were cause for alarm. I wondered if it would ever come back. If I was alone and if I did something to deserve it.

They used to push me even further away. If prayer wasn't fruitful then I would just stop. But it turns out that isn't really a great answer. If you miss someone, not talking to them isn't really a great way to change things.

With experience, my response to these times has changed too. I am still reading scripture. Still writing these reflections. Still praying. Not because I expect those things to change how I feel, but because I know that Christ is near even when I can't feel it. I have been here before, and I know it will pass.

What these patches have taught me is that any relationship with that kind of depth goes through seasons. The closeness and intensity cannot sustain at that level indefinitely. This is true of my relationship with Christ, my marriage, my friendships, my relationship with my boys. The slower periods are part of how a relationship breathes.

This is how I learned that the intensity – no matter how great it is – isn't love. The intensity is one of the fruits of love. Love itself doesn't rise and fall the way feelings do — it is much bigger than that.

Each time I get through one of these dry patches, I can look back and see the relationship is much bigger than the difficulty. Getting through it doesn't just prove the relationship survived. It builds a quieter, different kind of trust that the relationship will be there no matter what challenge it encounters.

It also teaches me that my senses can lie to me. I may not be able to feel Christ being close, but I know He is there. When this patch eventually passes, I will be able to look back and see exactly where He was through all of it.

Zechariah and Elizabeth were in a dry patch of their own, and by any measure it was a long one. They wanted a child badly and were intensely faithful people. In their time and place, that would have felt like absence on every level. But Zechariah was still serving in the temple. Elizabeth was still there. They weren't waiting for something to change – all the signs said that this wasn't going to change in their lifetime. They were just continuing to be who they were.

It is easy to think of that space between continuing in faith and feeling the relationship as just a gap — an empty stretch with nothing to show for it. It turns out that is exactly where God seems to work the most.

The gap isn't empty. The season where nothing seems to be happening is often exactly where God is at work — preparing something far bigger than what we thought we were waiting for.

What came out of that long dry stretch wasn't just the child they had hoped for. It was something they never could have imagined. And it was being prepared in the very season that felt like nothing.

The dryness isn't absence. It is making space. The question is whether we keep going long enough to see what is on the other side.

My Response for Today:
If you are in a dry patch right now, pick one thing — scripture, prayer, a reflection — and commit to doing it through the patch. If things are going well right now, take a moment to look back at your last dry season and notice where God was during it.