THERE’S AN ONGOING IN-JOKE in my family about making and keeping promises. One year, when our kids were small, we had the idea of setting up our tent in the living room for an indoor campout—or maybe, a “camp-in”? It was a school holiday, so we thought that might be fun.

They enjoyed getting to do something different, and asked if we could do it every year on that same holiday. Here’s where it gets interesting and controversial: nobody is 100% sure what was said, but the kids understood my wife to be promising that this would henceforth be our new family tradition. My wife, of course, remembers differently, though she’s a bit coy about it.

Today, every once in a while, that story will get trotted out again, and we’ll all laugh over what now seems like a harmless misunderstanding. But of course, not every broken promise—or perceived broken promise—is harmless. And that goes for the so-called “promises” of Scripture, too.

I’ll confess: I get a little uncomfortable sometimes when someone speaks of particular Bible verses as “promises.” It’s not because I don’t believe that there are indeed promises in Scripture. Rather, it’s because I know that as fallible human beings, we have a tendency to see what we want to see. We come to Scripture with questions that may have nothing to do with a text, and in that mindset, we find the answer we’re looking for in the text.

Don’t get me wrong: I do believe that God can speak to and encourage his people that way. The question is how we’ll respond when it seems that what we took to be a promise isn’t being fulfilled. Will we be able to admit that we may have gotten it wrong, and faithfully continue to trust in God’s goodness? Or will we blame God for breaking a promise or—perish the thought!—being unfaithful or untrustworthy?

Not everything we might take as a promise in Scripture actually is. But here’s one thing I do know: if an angel appears to you out of the blue and makes a concrete prediction about what’s going to happen to you personally, you’d better believe what the angel says.

. . .

AS WE’VE SEEN, the angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah in the temple, declaring that he and his wife Elizabeth would have a son despite being well beyond their childbearing years. Zechariah doubted how this could be true, and questioned Gabriel in a way that earned him a reprimand for not believing the promise.

But what about Elizabeth? She, after all, is the one who most directly bore the stigma of being childless, and she would be the one to carry and give birth to the prophesied child. How would she react to Gabriel’s promise? Here’s what Luke tells us, beginning with Zechariah completing his term of priestly duty:

When his time of service was completed, he returned home. After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.” (Luke 1:23-25, NIV)

Note that Luke doesn’t actually tell us when Elizabeth found out. In the case of Jesus, we know from both Luke and Matthew’s gospels that an angel visited both Joseph and Mary with the good news. It’s possible, then, that Gabriel appeared to Elizabeth directly. If so, Luke doesn’t say. But if not, Zechariah would have returned home excited and full of news but unable to speak. How did he get the message across to his wife? Did he try sign language, like a game of Charades? How do you sign, “You’re going to have a baby,” anyway? (Feel free to act it out yourself.) Did he write it down in hasty, hard-to-read scribbles? Did she understand? When she did understand, did she believe?

Luke doesn’t give us the details. But what he does give us is an obvious contrast between Zechariah’s and Elizabeth’s responses. Zechariah is cautious and doubtful; Elizabeth believes and is grateful, with her gratitude focused particularly on how she will now be able to hold her head up high. People will no longer see her as the shamefully barren woman, but as the recipient of God’s special favor.

Luke does give us one specific and mysterious detail: after Elizabeth conceived, she hid herself away for five months. Why? Several quite different explanations have been offered. Some say she secluded herself to pray. Maybe. Others guess that she was mirroring her husband’s muteness; if he couldn’t tell the story, why should she? It’s hard for me to imagine, though, that the other four priests who witnessed Gabriel’s appearance would have kept it to themselves, and surely the people would have pestered them for an explanation.

The better explanation, I think, is that having experienced the social humiliation of being childless, Elizabeth stayed away from the prying eyes of her neighbors until the baby bump became noticeable, which takes four to five months. She had had enough of shame, and in a culture where gossip spread quickly, she didn’t want to endure the stares and whispers. She wanted to wait until such a time when she could say confidently and out loud for all to hear, “The Lord has done this for me.”

None of this is to suggest some simple contrast between believing women and unbelieving men. Abraham, remember, is the one who believed God’s promise, while Sarah laughed at the very idea and then lied about it (Gen 18:10-15). Rather, the emphasis here should be on God’s faithfulness to his promise, however his people may respond. He doesn’t say, “You didn’t believe, so the deal’s off.” Instead, one of the enduring themes of the Old Testament story is that over the span of centuries, God is faithful to the promise he made to Abraham even when his people are unfaithful, even when they must be punished or disciplined for a time. That’s one of Luke’s themes, too.

We should be both humble and circumspect about what we take as biblical promises. But we can and should take comfort in the fact that God will indeed be faithful to any promise actually made, even if we have to wait for it, even when we have doubts and questions.