Week 1 Monday - That First Easter... I Was There
Day 1: The Silence
Day 1: The Silence
Malachi 4:5-6; Luke 1:5-17
Introduction
Four hundred years.
That’s how long the silence lasted between the last words of the prophet Malachi and the angel’s announcement to Zechariah in the temple. Four centuries. No prophets. No fresh revelation. No clear word from heaven. Just the echo of ancient promises and the crushing weight of waiting.
The faithful remnant kept watching. Kept hoping. Kept believing that God would send the Messiah He’d promised through Abraham, through David, through Isaiah. But year after year, generation after generation, the heavens remained silent. The Romans came and conquered. The temple was rebuilt, then corrupted by politics and profit. Religious leaders argued about laws and traditions while ordinary people wondered in the spaces between prayers:
Has God forgotten His promises?
Here is what they couldn’t see from inside the silence: God was working. Positioning people. Preparing hearts. Orchestrating circumstances across empires and nations. The silence wasn’t absence — it was anticipation. Every delay had purpose. Every quiet year was part of a plan so vast it required the exact alignment of politics, language, roads, and human hearts across the known world.
And then, at exactly the right time — not a moment early, not a breath late — an angel appeared to an old priest burning incense in the temple. The silence shattered. God’s redemptive plan burst into motion with four words:
“Do not be afraid.”
But those four hundred years matter. Not as wasted time. Not as divine forgetfulness. They matter because we know what it feels like to wait in silence. To wonder if God has forgotten. To be tempted to fill the quiet with our own solutions, our own noise, our own plans when heaven seems to have gone dark.
We were there in the waiting. We are there still.
Scripture
⁵ “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. ⁶ He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.”
— Malachi 4:5-6 (NIV)
⁵ In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. ⁶ Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. ⁷ But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.
⁸ Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, ⁹ he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. ¹⁰ And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
¹¹ Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. ¹² When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. ¹³ But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. ¹⁴ He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, ¹⁵ for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. ¹⁶ He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. ¹⁷ And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
— Luke 1:5-17 (NIV)
Reflection
The Last Words
Malachi’s prophecy was the last word. “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes.” A promise. A warning. And then — nothing. The scroll rolled up. The prophet’s voice went silent. The canon closed.
Imagine being the generation that heard those words and then watched. Waiting for Elijah. Scanning the horizon for the forerunner who would announce the day of the Lord. One generation passed. Then another. Then ten more. The words stayed fixed on the page, but heaven offered no updates, no clarifications, no assurances that anyone up there was still paying attention.
Silence doesn’t mean God has stopped working. It means we can’t see what He’s doing yet.
The people who waited through those 400 years didn’t know that God was setting the stage. The Roman roads that connected the empire — perfect for spreading a message quickly. The common Greek language that allowed people from different nations to understand each other — ready-made for a gospel that would go to all nations. The Jewish diaspora scattered across the known world — synagogues in every city where Paul would one day preach. The longing for a deliverer that had grown so intense under Roman occupation that when Jesus finally came, crowds would shout “Hosanna!” and lay down palm branches.
All of it — orchestrated in the silence.
We Are Like Them
Where are you waiting for God to act? What promise feels delayed? What prayer sits unanswered in the space between your words and heaven’s silence?
We do what they did. We fill the silence with noise. We create our own plans when God’s plan seems slow. We manufacture solutions because waiting feels unbearable. We demand signs, demand clarity, demand that God explain Himself on our timeline. And when He doesn’t — when the silence stretches and the waiting aches — we begin to wonder if He’s forgotten. If He’s listening. If He cares.
We scroll through social media when prayer feels dry. We binge Netflix when God seems distant. We chase the next achievement, relationship, or distraction because sitting in the quiet with unanswered questions feels unbearable. We do anything—everything—to avoid the silence.
But what if the silence is part of the story? What if God is working in ways we can’t see, preparing things we can’t imagine, positioning us for something we’re not ready for yet? The faithful remnant who waited for 400 years didn’t know their Messiah would come as a baby in a manger. They didn’t know He would be a suffering servant before a conquering king. They didn’t know the silence was setting the stage for the most important moment in human history.
Neither do we know what God is preparing in our seasons of silence. And here we are—over 2,000 years since the Messiah came the first time, still waiting for His return. The faithful remnant waited 400 years for His first coming. We’ve been waiting five times longer for His second. The silence continues. The wondering persists.
We were there in the 400 years. We are there now. Waiting. Tempted to believe the silence means absence. Wondering - When Is He Coming Back?
But the angel’s words to Zechariah are still true: “Do not be afraid. Your prayer has been heard.” Even when heaven seems silent. Especially then.
Grace Note
“I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”
— Psalm 27:13 (NKJV)
The psalmist is honest—he almost lost heart. The waiting nearly broke him. But faith held. Not because the silence ended, but because he chose to believe God’s goodness was still there, still working, still coming. That’s the choice we face in every season of silence: Will we lose heart, or will we believe we will see His goodness? The answer determines everything.
Prayer Prompt
Jesus,
I confess that I struggle with Your silence. I want answers now, clarity today, solutions immediately. When heaven seems quiet, I begin to wonder if You’re listening. If You remember. If You care. Forgive me for confusing silence with absence, for mistaking Your perfect timing as forgetfulness.
Teach me to wait well. Not passively — not with resignation or despair — but with active trust. Help me believe that You are working even when I can’t see it. That You are speaking even when I can’t hear it. That You are moving even when everything feels impossibly still.
Give me faith to trust Your timing. To resist the urge to fill the silence with my own noise. To believe that what You’re preparing is worth the wait — even when the waiting hurts. You kept Your promises to the faithful remnant who waited 400 years. You will keep Your promises to me. Amen.
Response
1. Name the Silence: Write down one area of your life where you’re waiting for God to act. A prayer that feels unanswered. A promise that seems delayed. A situation where heaven feels silent. Be specific. Name it honestly — not to accuse God, but to bring it into the light where faith can take root.
2. Resist the Noise: Today, practice stillness instead of filling the silence. Set aside 10 minutes to sit quietly before God without asking for anything, without demanding answers, without trying to solve the problem yourself. Just be still. Trust that He is working even when you can’t see it. Silence isn’t emptiness — it’s the space where God prepares what’s coming next.
3. Remember His Faithfulness: Look back at a time when God answered a prayer or fulfilled a promise — maybe not on your timeline, but exactly when it needed to happen. Write it down. Let that memory become an anchor for this present waiting. If He was faithful then, He will be faithful now. His timing is always perfect, even when it feels impossibly slow.
To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: That First Easter... I Was There
© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way