Not on the cards
Every year the avalanche of cards betrays the mixed motives and metaphors of the British Christmas. Beside the usual themes of winter, holly, robins and stars, there are the innumerable ways of portraying and embroidering the birth narratives, loosely featuring stable, manger, assorted animals, the shepherds and the magi. But Luke's carefully chosen and recorded stories of those who saw and worshipped this baby include two elderly witnesses who have always been left out. Simeon and Anna, unlike the shepherds and the kings, are simply not on the cards - they are the missing worshippers of the newborn King.
Jesus was probably still under a year old when he was taken to the temple to fulfil the requirements of the Law for first-born sons. Simeon and Anna, prompted by the Holy Spirit, were there when he was carried in. The Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon, Luke tells us, that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ. In all the bustle of that busy place, full of families fulfilling their obligations, buying pigeons, going through the required rituals, these two elderly devout believers, waiting for the promise of a Messiah, saw one family with one small baby and knew he was the Christ. For most of the hundreds of others in the crowded temple, the idea that this newborn Galilean baby should be the Messiah was not on the cards - not what they expected and probably not what they would have wanted.
All around us the busyness and festive consumption of Christmas, like the temple bustle, has God's promise of a Saviour hidden somewhere at its heart. May the Holy Spirit open our eyes to reveal once more the amazing truth of God incarnate as a small baby, and may he open the eyes of those around us for whom this is simply not on the cards.
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