Simeon & Anna

I have two new heroes; Simeon & Anna. Now most people probably have no idea who those people are, so here's a little background (you can check it in Luke chapter 2).

Simeon is an old man who has one thing keeping him alive. The Holy Spirit told him that he would see the Messiah before He died. Now that's keeping in touch with God! And what a promise to be given. But it gets more amazing. Simeon's sitting at home or whatever one day and the Holy Spirit tells him, "Go to the temple." Again, the guy's so in tune with God he doesn't question and goes to the temple. He sees an 8 day old baby and immediately knows who it is. He sees Jesus, takes him from Mary (lovingly of course, not in a child abduction kind of way) and prays over the child and blesses God for letting him see the Messiah.

And then there's Anna. Anna is about 105 years old, and here's how I figured that out. It says she was married for 7 years, then was a widow for 84! That's 91 years, take the average age of a young bride in Israel at the time as 14, and there's your 105. But her age is not the amazing thing (although I could handle living to 105). The Bible says she spent every day, day and night, at the Temple worshipping God, fasting and praying. She has dedicated every moment of her life to God! Is she in tune with God? She must be, she also ends up seeing Mary and Joseph holding a baby and goes over, knowing exactly who it is and also praying over Him and blessing Him.

Can you imagine knowing God that well? That you could be at church on a hot day, outside, and one of the many, many couples who line up at the Temple to have their baby "blessed" 8 days after their born, see one baby in the line and go, "There Is God!" To run over and hold the baby knowing that it is Jesus, God on earth, the Messiah, the One to be their Savior. I like how one translation put what Simeon said. He had "seen salvation". What a cool phrase, but even more amazing, the fact Simeon recognized that he was indeed looking at the Salvation of mankind.

Think you can know God that well? These weren't special people in our sense of the word. They weren't celebrities. They weren't ministers. They weren't Billy Grahams of their day or even teachers. They were people at the Temple trying to get to know God even better (which must have been hard seeing as they had to have been so incredibly close already).

Not to go all Star Wars, but I think George Lucas put it best when talking to a man named Bill Moyers one day. "I think there is a God. No question. What that God is what we know about God, I'm not sure... Even cavemen thought they had it figured out. I would say that cavemen understood on a scale of about 1. Now we've made it up to 5. The only thing is most people don't realize is the scale goes to 1 million."

Where did Simeon and Anna stand on the scale, to be able to pick God out of a bunch of crying babies? 100? 1 000? 999 999? Some days I feel like a 5. Some days a 1. But I'm shooting for a million...

T