I used this blog post from faith meets world in my service tonight. I found it helpful. We are hopeless at waiting and Simeon and Anna are examples of patience and endurance in prayer…
The long, slow work of God
We live in an age of haste. Technology has tended to make everything faster, and this trend shows no sign of letting up. News, fashions and cultural phenomena can now propagate around the world at lightning speed. We’re trained to want and expect everything now, in an instant.
In this age of instant everything, Candlemas gives us an opportunity to stop and remind ourselves that God’s work in the world is often anything but instant; in fact, it tends to be long and slow. The Jewish people had to wait centuries for their Messiah to come; Simeon and Anna had to wait nearly their whole lifetime before they saw salvation with their own eyes; and Mary would have to wait thirty more years before she’d see Jesus begin to visibly fulfil the promise she’d been given about him. Thirty years of obscurity with nothing much out of the ordinary apparently happening – except that, in the very obscurity and ordinariness of it all, the long, slow work of God was quietly unfolding.
The question I’d like to leave us with is this: will we, like Simeon and Anna, have the kind of vision that allows us to see God at work where others see nothing special? Will we attend church out of a sense of religious duty, looking at our watches to see how much longer we have to wait for the service to end, or will we allow ourselves to be so immersed in worship and the liturgy that we’re slowed down and our eyes are opened to see all the seemingly small and insignificant ways God is at work in the world? Will we be distracted by whatever the latest fads, fashions and trends happen to be, or will we remain awake and aware enough to see the long, slow work of God unfolding in our church, our communities, our families and our lives? My prayer is that we, like Simeon and Anna, might be faithful; that we might cultivate a day-to-day connection with the Spirit; that we might have the kind of vision that sees potential and possibility where others see nothing out of the ordinary; and that we might not only see but celebrate the quiet, persistent work of God among us.
