Dear Anna,
You are always so deeply submerged in prayer when I enter the temple that I’m sure you will not recall that we’ve met.
But Anna, how often have I watched you, so deep in in His presence and so often I have hoped your worship was enough for both of us.
I knew what many of the others said, they weren’t often kind, I think in the past I too felt uncomfortable at the depth of your devotion. To watch you jabbed at that place in me that knows I don’t give Him the everything He deserves, or even the everything I could. I have family to look after, I have errands to run, I have…I have…I have. So much of what I have is more about what I don’t have. I have distractions Anna, I have excuses, I have a restlessness that pulls me away from sitting silently waiting on Him.
Did you know Anna what you were waiting these 77 years for? Was it a specific answer you knew to wait for, or just a sense or a calling to wait and worship? What thoughts have filled those endless hours? ….Anna did you ever pray for me? For the rest of us who have hurried to and through the temple, past your stillness, past His presence in you?
Anna, did it ever trouble you that perhaps you had missed what you had been called to wait on ? That in some distracted moment of worldly concern, the thing…the event had come and gone and you, looking briefly aside had missed it all together? Did it not keep you awake in the night that He calls all the time and so often we don’t hear or see what is right in front of us? I often wonder in my haste if I have missed His call to me Anna, and I wonder in awe at your faithfulness all these years, the trusting that If..yes if, you missed it He would come again and ensure that this time you heard or saw.
Have you had small encounters Anna in all this time that made you wonder if they were the purpose of your wait? The smaller stories wholly swallowed into the bigger one…Have you pleaded in your prayer that your heart would burn with the knowing that this was what you were created for? Those scarce words from God given through you to speak truth into the life of a pilgrim in need of direction, or an affirmation or a warning. So many of us Anna, don’t hear Him as clearly as you. Who wouldn’t know how to sit and hear His voice sing into our souls.
Did these small moments often make you wonder if the waiting was the thing? That the patience was the calling? I wondered that for you, Anna, even if you didn’t. I pondered on why the Lord had called you to wait endlessly, fruitlessly it seemed. I didn’t want your purpose, if this were the case, but I did…do want your devotion.
I know in all this time, I would worry that the event, the fulfilment would perhaps disappoint, did that cross your mind ever Anna? Did you even devote a minute of your time to thinking what comes after? What would be your purpose after all that you had waited for had arrived?
I think you simply trusted, in peace and assurance in the goodness of God. I think if that darkness ever arose on the horizon of your mind you would instantly dispel it with the light your were so united with. That’s grace Anna.
He came through didn’t He, our God. He did deliver and whilst I know I would never have sat so patiently for those endless weeks, months and years, I would have traded every moment, every possession, every distraction for the joy I saw in your face as they entered the temple that day holding the Christ child. I wasn’t sure where the light came from that shone from the encounter, you, the child or his Mother…..but in that moment I knew that all you had waited for had come, and that it was beyond even your expectation. Simeon praised and exhaulted God, yes, but Anna it was no more spoken than the joy that radiated from you.
Anna, you revealed Christ to us all that day, perhaps we would have passed by, our hearts so out of tune we would have missed the symphony being played out at that moment. In seeing the fruition of your purpose Anna we discovered our own.
Thankyou, Anna, please pray that we, led by your example grow in patience, trust, perseverance and devotion. That our lives are spent listening and in anticipation of beholding the face of Christ.
In Him
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