City Life Starter

Written by Efe Abbe

The Word

22 When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took
him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn
male is to be consecrated to the Lord”), 24 and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law
of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.”25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem called
Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit
was on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen
the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought
in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28 Simeon took him in his arms
and praised God, saying:

29 “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss[d] your servant in peace.
30 For my eyes have seen your salvation,
31 which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,    and the glory of your people Israel.”
33 The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them
and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and
to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a
sword will pierce your own soul too.”
36 There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she
had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, 37 and then was a widow until she was
eighty-four.[e] She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. 38 Coming
up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were
looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

Luke 2:22-40

Reflection

Waiting.
It isn’t a word or a state of being that many people, including myself enjoy.
Seconds can turn into minutes into hours.
Hours into days into weeks;;
Weeks into months;
Months into years;
Years into decades;
Decades into centuries;
Centuries into even millennia.
In our same-day delivery, instacarting world, what does waiting expectantly even mean anymore? How
do we wait well, with expectation?
Living as disciples of Jesus in the twenty-first century, it can be easy to miss that we are inheritors of a
faith and a promise fulfilled passed down to us after millennia of waiting and expectation.
An expectation since God’s promise in Eden that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent (Genesis
3:15); Since the promise God made to Abraham that through him and his descendants all the nations of the earth would be blessed(Genesis 12:1-3); Since prophet after prophet told of the suffering servant (Isaiah 42:1-13), the coming anointed one (Isaiah 61:1-2); The people of God had waited.
Through plenty and victory and blessing;
Through exile and oppression and silence;
Through seasons of obedience;
And through seasons of rejecting God.
Matthew painstakingly counts the generations from Abraham to David to the exile to Christ: forty-two
generations or roughly two thousand years by one estimate (Matthew 1:1-17).
And suddenly, God’s promised Messiah, Israel’s King is born!
And not many people notice.
But those who do are the ones who have been expectant and had their eyes peeled, like kids asking “are
we there yet?” They wait well because of their intimately childlike and simple trust that the One who
promised has been, is, and will always be faithful.
You can almost feel the giddiness in Simeon and Anna’s voices as they hold the Messiah child, hearts
overflowing with joy and gratitude for seeing God’s promise with their eyes.

Application

So many generations had passed before Simeon and Anna hoping but not seeing. What did waiting with
expectation look like for them? And what does it look like for us in the time in between advent past and
advent to come?
We are in good company and the writer of the letter Hebrews goes through the roll call of our forebears in
their expectation of the Messiah to come and who “died in faith without receiving the promises, but having seen them having
welcomed them from a distance…” (Hebrews 11:13a).

Welcoming the promises from a distance.

The perfect attitude for us the “here but still to come” generation of Jesus’s disciples who have received
God’s indescribable gift of redemption but still wait the final making of all things new. We can do this by
the grace of God for “He who sits on the throne said ‘Behold, I am making all things new’.” His “words
are faithful and true.” He also has said “It is done!” (Revelation 21:5).

Prayer

Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for being steadfastly loyal to keep Your promises. Help us to remember
and trust in Your deep wisdom and grace, that You are relentlessly working to make all things, including
us, new through Your Son King Jesus and by Your Spirit. Amen