Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Do you wonder sometimes if you are insignificant in God's great economy of salvation?
Probably old Anna used to wonder if she was only that. You read of her in Luke 2:36-38; God has given her three verses in the Bible!
When she comes onstage, she has been married 91 years but was a widow for 84 of them; she is a scholar and teacher. Her whole soul is absorbed "in Christ" for she cherishes the prophecies of His coming. She was like Paul who later said, "for me, to live is Christ" (Phil. 1:21). She was living in what Luke says was "the temple," retired "with fastings and prayers night and day."
In the ungodly atmosphere that was "the temple" of those days, she held on to her faith "in the Lord's soon coming," as we say; she held on doubtless because she understood the prophecy of Daniel 9:24-26 when the official priests in the temple had long ago abandoned their faith in that prophecy. It was too "old-fashioned" by then.
But she being apparently insignificant in God's plan is ready for something wonderful when she comes into the temple precisely at the instant that old Simeon, another who is apparently insignificant, has taken the infant Lord Christ in his arms to pray for Him and bless Him. What a noble life work old Simeon has discovered in his old age way past retirement! No other man in all the world had been so honored--to hold the Messiah in his arms and pray for Jesus! Not many people have ever prayed for a blessing for Jesus! We pray Him to give usblessings!
There was something special about Simeon; the apostle Paul had not yet come onstage who later spoke about cherishing "the blessed hope" of seeing the Lord return the secondtime (Titus 2:11-14), yet he cherished the same hope about His firstcoming in his old age! This must have been also on his part a very intelligent and well-informed faith (genuine faith is never willingly ignorant or uninformed). How this was "revealed to him by the Holy Spirit" we do not know; but it could not have been mere factual knowledge of the arithmetic of Daniel 9:25, 26; it had to be a "heart" kind of knowledge or old Simeon could never have been so highly honored as to have been given this key part in the glorious gospel story.
Through all eternity in the kingdom of God old Simeon will enjoy this honor of being a key player in the drama of the first advent of Christ. Keep the faith; let Christ be the One for whom you live, and you will be a key player in the unfolding of the events that just precede His second coming.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: September 3, 2007.
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