Two Old People Who Waited Their Whole Lives

In the great temple in Jerusalem, there was an old man named Simeon. He loved God, and he was waiting.

Do you know what it is to wait for something? To wait so long that the waiting becomes part of you, steady as your own heartbeat?

Simeon had waited his whole life.

Long ago, God had whispered a promise to him. "You will not close your eyes in death," God said, "until you have seen the One I am sending. The One who will make everything right."

So Simeon watched. Year after year. Spring after spring. His hair turned white. His hands grew thin. And still he came to the temple, every day, his old eyes searching every face that passed through the doors.

Is it you? Is it you? Is it you, little one?

And day after day, the answer was not yet.

You might have wondered if he was foolish, waiting so long for someone he had never seen. But Simeon knew the heart of God, and God never forgets a promise, not even one.

Then one ordinary morning, a young mother came through the doors. Her name was Mary. In her arms was a baby, small and new, wrapped warm against the cold. It was the same baby who, just weeks before, had slept in a feeding trough while angels sang to shepherds in the dark fields. But nobody in the temple knew that. They saw just a poor family, come to thank God for their little boy.

The moment Simeon saw that baby, something leapt inside him.

This was the One. This little, sleeping, ordinary-looking baby was the rescue he had ached for all his life.

Simeon held out his trembling arms. And gently, Mary laid the baby in them.

And the old man held God's promise close against his chest, and he wept, and he could hardly breathe for the gladness of it.

"Now," he said softly. "Now I can go in peace. My eyes have seen it. I have held the rescue in my own two hands."

A whole lifetime of waiting. And it was for this. For him.

And there was someone else.

A very old woman named Anna lived right there in the temple. She had been alone for many, many years, and she had spent them praying, and hoping, and waiting, just like Simeon. Day and night she waited.

And when she saw the baby, she came hurrying over, and her tired face shone, and she began to tell everyone who would listen, "He's here. The One we longed for. He has finally come."

Two old people. Two whole lives of waiting. And the same little baby was the answer to both.

All those aching years, all those whispered prayers in the dark, were never, ever wasted. Like one long arrow drawn across a lifetime, they pointed straight to Jesus. And the very thing these two had longed for all their lives, they got to hold, small and warm and real, in their own arms.

And while Anna was still telling her news to everyone in the temple, far away in the east, wise men who had watched a strange new star rise were already packing for the long journey to find him.