As Advent draws to a close and the year draws to a close, I start to think more about 2025 and all it might entail.

Finally launching the side-hustle would be good. I did a google search to check out the details of selling at my local Ryde Wharf markets. The idea of selling face to face as opposed to online is appealing.

Or do I go on Facebook Marketplace instead?

I don’t use Facebook. I just have a profile. So it worries me a little that they are able to email me a list of groups I might like to connect with that are actually ones I might wish to join: Billy Graham Group, Bible verses Group and the Prayer War Room Group.

Yep. Those google searches are getting tracked.

But to make all those decisions…

There’s waiting for the holidays to arrive (finally here).

There’s waiting for things to slow down (not sure that ever comes).

There’s so much waiting time in life.

So much quality ‘padding’ … and not just with the quilts I’d like to make to sell.

That’s as good as the jokes are getting.

There’s a lot of waiting in the account of Jesus’ birth. I’ve reflected on Elizabeth and Zechariah’s waiting already. Anna and Simeon are two people who also spend a lot of time waiting.

Eight days after Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph had him circumcised. Then when the required time had passed for purification, they took Jesus up to the temple in Jerusalem and offered the customary sacrifice which was either two pigeons or two turtledoves.

That amuses me. Two turtledoves on the second day of Christmas from your true love, or what Mary and Joseph brought to the temple, forty days after Jesus was born.

At the temple, Mary and Joseph meet old Simeon, who had been told he would not die until he saw the Messiah. Now Simeon doesn’t hang around the temple all day, every day. The Bible records this:

Led by the spirit, he came into the Temple. As Jesus’ parents brought him in, to do for him what the law’s regulations required, he took the baby in his arms

This is life by the Spirit. “Led by the Spirit”.

The Bible records that when it comes to Simeon “the holy spirit was upon him.”

I know in my life, as I prayerfully keep in step with the Spirit, and ask for God’s help to do so, I can look back on a day or a week, or longer and think…

How on earth did I manage to do that?

But I know it’s not me. It’s the Spirit.

And not that I want to point the finger at that 12 days of Christmas song too much, but if everything does actually symbolise something, you’d think that the 3 French Hens would be the 3 persons of the Trinity so that the Holy Spirit could be lifted to its status as being God.

Because life by the Spirit is truly amazing.

You might have experienced it too.

You were there at that time.

You said something, at that time.

You performed an action, wrote an email, sent a text message at that time.*

Then someone says, “How did you know I was thinking about you earlier today?”

You didn’t and neither did I. The Spirit knew though.

Maybe it’s part of the way God is bringing that person into the kingdom.

After Simeon sees Jesus, the small family of three then move on to meet Anna, a prophetess and widow who does spend all her time at the temple.

She never left the Temple but worshiped with fasting and prayer night and day.

That is a woman who means business.

She prays first thing when she gets up and last thing before she goes to bed at night.

And she doesn’t appear to eat too much.

This is her spiritual act of worship. And this act of worship included a lot of waiting.

She was of a great age, having been widowed after a seven-year marriage,and was now eighty-four. 

That’s a while. And her wasting was not wasted.

She came up at that moment and gave thanks to God and spoke about Jesus to everyone who was waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

She waited a long time and then she was given a God-ordained opportunity to prophesy. To speak to others about Christ.

Sounds like evangelism to me.

Anna sets a typology for worship and evangelism. It is slow. It is patient. And it is prayerful.

So as I think about next year and think about it biblically, I should follow her example knowing that it is worth it in the end.

Yours with so much padding,

Alison

*Or… In my google search for Anna and Simeon I just happened to bring up the New Testament for Everyone version of the Bible that allowed me to make bad jokes about the 12 days of Christmas, which I wouldn’t have, had I gone straight to the NIV.