Patience That Recognizes Jesus

Mary and Joseph came to the temple that day to do something entirely ordinary. They came to complete the ritual every Jewish family completed after a firstborn son. Any number of babies were carried through that temple in any given month. To most people watching, this was one more anonymous infant among many. Simeon didn’t see it that way, and neither did Anna. Simeon had been promised by the Holy Spirit that he would see the Messiah before he died, and he had been waiting, watching, for who knows how many years, for a day exactly like this one. Anna had spent decades in that temple, fasting and praying, never leaving. She arrived at the exact moment Simeon was holding the child and recognized him too.

Nothing about that baby marked him out to the crowd. There was not a dramatic sign for Simeon and Anna to see. Instead, they relied on their wisdom of faith built up over many years. William Barclay described people like Simeon as belonging to a quiet remnant he called “the Quiet in the Land,” people with no interest in power or spectacle, who spent their lives in patient watchfulness for God to act.* Their eyes had been trained, slowly, over years, to recognize the thing everyone else in that temple walked right past. John Wesley called the practices of prayer, fasting and worship, much like Anna’s in the temple, the means of grace. The means of grace invite us to remain present with God. They are not stiff religious duties but the ordinary channels through which God’s grace does its slow, forming work in us.

Recognizing God at work in our lives is a result of paying attention to the small, sometimes quiet movements of God. It’s usually through years spent watching, praying, and staying where God can be found, before something is seen. People who have kept that kind of watch often carry a kind of spiritual sight that leads to greater depths of faith, not because they’re holier, but because of a practice of patience.

• Think of a time you recognized God doing something that others around you seemed to miss entirely. What had you been doing, praying, or paying attention to in the years before that moment that helped you see it?
• Simeon and Anna’s whole lives were spent in patient, quiet watchfulness rather than searching for something dramatic. Where in your life right now could you use more of that kind of quiet attentiveness, rather than waiting for God to announce himself loudly?