Advent Day 6 - A Guest Post by Patrick

Anticipation.

"Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, "Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,according to your word;for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel." (Luke 2:25-32).

I always wondered what it must have been like to be Simeon. To know that in my time, the Messiah will come! He spent his entire life waiting for the coming Messiah. He probably lived his whole life with a kind of holy expectancy; every day waking and thinking, Will it be today?

I wonder if he knew what he was waiting for. Did he know that the Messiah would come as a baby? I bet he didn't. I bet that all he knew was that one day he would see the Messiah, and he would know Who it was when he saw Him.

Simeon is a kind of microcosm of the Nation of Israel. For all of their history, ever since God spoke hope into Eve's shattered heart--hope of a coming Saviour who will make all evil become untrue--Israel has been waiting for the Messiah. And here he is at last and Simeon takes the Child into his arms and relief and joy flood over him as he recognizes this at last is who I've been waiting for.

I think this is symbolized in our tradition of Christmas gifts. We buy gifts for our loved ones and set them out under the Christmas tree and they sit there and we don't open them, we wait, expecting that one day soon we will open our gifts. We can see them, but we don't know what they are, so we wait. This tradition re-creates for us the kind of waiting that characterized Simeon, that characterized the Old Testament saints who lived with holy expectancy, waiting forward, looking for the coming of the Promised Messiah, not knowing what exactly they were waiting for, but knowing that they would know it when they saw it. "These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar," (Hebrews 11:13).

We don't practice our Christmas traditions for their own sake, rather, they serve as reminders to our hearts of what kind of people we are. We are people who wait forwardly with holy expectancy. 1 John 3:2-3 describes our situation like this, and I just love this so much:

"Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure."

We wait with holy expectancy for His return, our Messiah. Will it be today? Tonight?

-- Merry Christmas friends!
xo.