Its Been A Long Time Coming

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.~ Luke 2:25





Advent Blog; Day 17

Advent means arrival, or coming. The season of Advent s a season of waiting and anticipation. Awaiting the arrival of Christmas. In my family (just 2 boys and myself) the birthdays are over by July. July the 21st is the last one. Usually July 21st is the first mention of Christmas, about an hour after all the presents have been opened. "Daddy" I will hear, "how long is it to Christmas?". Ethan, my son with the last birthday, is well placed in the calender. He has only 5 or 7 months to wait until the next present extravaganza (I can also almost guarantee the "How long till my birthday?" question will be broached somewhere around Christmas day). If I say Christmas is in 5 months, which incidentally sounds, in my opinion, like a lot less than 150 days (approx), the next question will be "but how long is that?". I break it down into weeks (approx 20). Further groans are heard. Then come the days. I try to explain that 150 days really isn't as long as it sounds....but the problem is, I am lying. It is exactly as long as it sounds. Its all about perception.

I remember Summer holidays, even as a teenager, seemed to last forever. As a kid I could not see the end of 6 weeks. I could not actually picture it ending. It seemed as though it were an eternity. I am pretty sure my mum viewed it that way too.

 As a teen, I remember one particular year, looking forward to the holidays so much and to all the things I would do with my best friend. Somewhere in the first week or so we fell out, big time. He refused to speak to me and we spent weeks apart. We lived in a small village with not much to do.  In the end, because time was dragging so much, he got so bored that he decided to bury the hatchet. I imagine nowadays it could take more than 4 weeks to break him. Its all about perspective. I remember back when I was 34 thinking to myself, "Oh my goodness, its only 6 years till I am 40" and then came the realisation that I had said the words "ONLY 6 years". I am now 39 and am thinking "only 10 yrs till I am 50!" But time is not moving any faster, just my perception of it.

The advent of the Messiah was long waited for. My children think they have it hard waiting 5 months for Christmas. Think what it is for the Children of Israel. We deal with a God who is eternal and we can not, but by his grace, keep pace with him. Some times there is so much waiting. Sometimes he moves so rapidly it makes my head spin. Take Joseph, for example. He spends years in slavery and prison waiting for Gods promises and then BANG in a fell swoop he is prime minister of Egypt and the prophecy has come true.

The signs were there for us when Abraham took his son up the mountain, carrying the wood on his back for his own sacrifice but the world had to wait some 2000 years for the real deal. We hear a lot, in church circles, the saying that "a day is to God as a thousand years". In other words his time scale is not ours. He is patient and spontaneous simultaneously.

So much of the bible is about waiting patiently and about eager expectation. The Psalms are full of references to waiting patiently for God. "My soul waits for the Lord" David says. And "I waited patiently for the Lord, he inclined and heard my cry" (Psalm 40). The people of Israel had to wait for Pharaoh to release them, Laban had to wait 14 years for Rachel, Sarah Had to wait for the promised child, Israel had to wait to return from exile. God is a God who works in the waiting as much as in the arrival.

But the day of deliverance will definitely come. The Advent will happen. Simeon had received a promise from God, "It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah."  So the story goes that when Jesus was bought into the temple to be circumcised Simeon was moved to go into the temple too. He took Jesus in his arms and said these immortal words;

“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
 For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and the glory of your people Israel.”

 

Now I get the waiting bit but what is so fascinating about Simeon is that (possibly) he's not waiting for something he is going to be doing much benefiting from. It was merely the fulfilment of the promise that he wanted to see, whatever that meant for him. We tend to fill in the blanks here but it certainly meant that he could now die. Whether that was immediate or not we are not told. I get such a sense of this mans Godliness. He was not caught up in what it would make of him, or what he could get out of it, he simply wanted to be where God was and to see him at work. I think Simeon was amazing. God was faithful to his word. Simeon was waiting for the consolation of Israel, watching and praying and now, at last it had come.

 

I wonder how my boys would feel if I were to take them away for the month of December, isolate ourselves out in the wilds maybe and return after Christmas was over without having celebrated it. When I told them that they had missed it, how would they feel? I was once waiting for a party, as a teen, for weeks. I had a rather heavy session on Friday night and went to bed early on \sat morning. The party had been on the Saturday night but I did not wake until Sunday morning. Given that I was 18 can you imagine how gutted I was to have missed entirely the thing I was waiting for? It was a horrible feeling.

 

The carol says "No ear may hear his coming". If you weren't looking for it you could easily have missed it. How sad that the people of Israel, as a whole, were too blinkered, at the time, to see Messiah when he came. This time.

 

King Davids Psalm of deliverance says

 

I waited patiently for the Lord;
he turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
and gave me a firm place to stand.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear
and put their trust in the Lord.

I guess I want to just say, hang in there. Deliverance doesn't always take the form we are expecting. It didn't for Israel. Sometimes healing takes longer than we think it will. Sometimes healing looks different to how we imagine it will, sometimes the journey is more or equally valuable than the destination but don't lose heart. God is faithful. It will come. Sorrow will last for the night but Joy comes in the morning. I think the waiting makes Christmas all the more special. It did for the first one. I am sure Simeon would concur.