My eyes have seen your salvation
Lord, you have been our dwelling place
In all generations. Psalm 90:1
Read Luke 2:25—32
Suppose I make it to old age. Suppose I have the sense that my life’s all done now, that it’s been lived to its conclusion, that there’s nothing more to come for me. If someone were to place a newborn child in my arms I think that would be fitting. I’d have the assurance that there is still a future beyond my solitary life. The little child drawing breath would cheer me, in a sense. It would speak to me of my own frail beginnings, and my now frail ending, and I wouldn’t have to be much of a philosopher — I could feel it as easily as think it — to recognise that this is a fitting way to conclude life on this earth. My life finished, another begun. But these two old people do better than that. Simeon and Anna: they’re in on something. They have been gifted. They have prayed and waited on God, and they have been gifted with the heart of the story. This child they hold is not just fitting for them. He is fitting for all Israel. He is fitting for all humanity, all peoples. Everyone on the planet will be invited to see the conclusion of their lives in this one.
Gracious Father, I thank you for these two old people, my dear brother and sister, who saw the child. Who saw more than a child. Who saw everything they had wanted, everything they had prayed for, and everything you wanted for all humanity. They saw this breathing in front of them. They saw by faith. And they saw that there was nothing more for them to ask for now. It is this assurance I ask for. I pray tonight that I, too, may look upon Jesus as he gives himself to me. He trusts himself to me as implicitly as a child. And having held him, I, too, can say, ‘Now, Master, dismiss me in peace.’ When my time comes, let my final days, my dying breath, be clothed with that assurance. In Christ I have held the future of all humanity, and my own future. When I come to that moment, dismiss me in peace.