Waiting. We have rooms designated for it. It is as though we need four walls to contain us while we wait. I do not like waiting. I quite despise it if I am being honest. We wait for many things and in the meantime we try to keep busy with jobs and lives and hobbies and things. Some people seem destined for certain things and certain times. Winston Churchill seemed made to lead Britain in WW2. As though if WW2 had not come along he would have ended up as some irrated angry man running a private boys school somewhere always wondering why he felt as though something were missing. Always wondering why things nagged at him so.

 

The disciples waited for Christ to return. They waited and they waited and they waited. For the most part they did not wait patiently. You can even read the impatience between the lines of scripture. There was a sense that He would come at anytime. That perhaps tomorrow was the day but most certainly within their lives. Their impatience was so great that it comes through the pages of God’s inspired word.

 

What happens to a man destined for greatness if the times do not oblige him? Simeon was promised he would hold in his arms the Messiah, the Son of God. He was even told that he would not die until this came to pass. How must it have been for him to wait for this? He was an old man when it finally happened.

 

I think how we wait is a test of our faith in what we are waiting for. I am guessing that Simeon waited patiently. His words uttered in the Gospel of Luke after having finally been given the child messiah to hold suggest a person of trust and faith: