Monday meditation: ‘God Came Down,’ Part 5: Ending the wait
They say as many as a million revelers crowd Times Square each December 31 to wait for the ball to drop.
They begin arriving in the morning, and by 3:00 p.m., police are erecting barricades for security and crowd control. People are warned not to leave their spot once they’ve found it; in the crush of the crowd, they’ll never make their way back. There are no restrooms. Urban legend has it that people just wear Depends and ignore basic needs till the early hours of the new year.
It’s a long, crowded, cold, hungry (wet?) wait. But there’s no other celebration like it in the world, no more exuberant expression of hope at the dawn of a new year.
A quiet wait
Today’s reading describes another wait, a wait of decades for two senior citizens who were continuing a wait that had sustained their people for centuries. It was a quiet wait, without noisemakers and confetti, a daily wait for these two who never gave up their worship in the temple.
One of them, the priest Simeon, is portrayed in this week’s Bible art. The Holy Spirit was upon him, the Scripture says, without explaining how this happened or when it began. But the Bible does add that the Spirit had promised Simeon he would not die till he had seen God’s promised Anointed One, the Christ.
And so he had waited. For many years he waited.
And as soon as he caught sight of Mary and Joseph with the infant Jesus, he knew the wait was over. “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,” he prayed. “My eyes have seen your salvation.”
Soon an 84-year-old widow, a prophet named Anna, came upon Simeon talking with the young family. She had spent her life worshipping in the temple, but when she saw Jesus in Simeon’s arms, she knew this was something unlike anything she’d ever witnessed there. As one translation puts it, “…she began praising God. She talked about the child to everyone who had been waiting expectantly for God to rescue Jerusalem.”
An expectant wait
“Waiting expectantly”—it’s a good phrase for the first day of a new year, isn’t it? Like the New York ball watchers and Simeon and Anna, we are waiting, too. And like them, ours is not a passive wait.
We passionately want something better. A life for our loved one without pain or worry or insecurity. A future for ourselves beyond the burdens of caregiving. We desperately want to see some sign from God that he’s with us as we plod through our days.
It’s encouraging to remember that God did not allow Simeon’s and Anna’s lifetime wait to be in vain. They died at peace because God made himself known to them.
A patient wait
We want peace, too. This new day of the new year is the perfect time to say we’ll wait for God to provide it. The psalmist advised, “Be still in the presence of the Lord, and wait patiently for him to act.” And he adds, “I waited patiently for the Lord to help me, and he turned to me and heard my cry.”
As we cry to God for help, let us recommit to patiently watching for it. And when we’ve received the blessings that could come only from his hand, we’ll know they were worth the wait.
Read: Luke 2:22-38 ESV and NLT
Pray: We are expecting you to show up in our lives, Lord. We are eager to know you are with us. We will be still. We will be patient. We will wait.
Illustration copyright Classic Bible Art. All rights reserved. For more information about securing a library of this beautiful art for yourself, see here or here. Some art in this series is available for license at Goodsalt.com.