In God's Time

We’ve all had times where we’ve passed somebody and not really seen them. I know I have. Now, why was that? Well, it’s because we weren’t looking for them. Maybe our mind was preoccupied. We were somewhere else, thinking mentally, and we just passed something that was, maybe, familiar to us, and we didn’t even see it.

Simeon saw Jesus because he was looking for Jesus. We see what we look for. The scripture says that the Holy Spirit was upon him and that he was led by the Holy Spirit to be in the Temple on this particular day.

In this hymn of Simeon, verses 29-32, he praises God. He then blesses child, and speaks over him to Mary and Joseph - and to the temple crowd - the word of God regarding what had occurred and was occurring and would occur throughout the life of this child.

In some ways, Simeon’s words remind me of a line in a speech made by Martin Luther King where he said, "Like any man, I would like to live, but it really doesn’t matter anymore because I’ve been to the mountain top." King was using an analogy of Moses having the privilege to view the Promised Land before his death. Likewise, Simeon has reached the mountaintop; he has seen God keep His promise. You could say that he has achieved his childhood dream.

I’ve heard people say, upon achieving a milestone or some life’s goal, that “I can die happy now”. They feel they have reached the culmination of their life and it just can’t get any better than that particular moment.

This is what Simeon is saying when he makes the statement, “you can now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation.” Think about it. Can you possibly imagine the feeling in Simeon’s spirit in verse 28 when he took the Christ child into his arms? Can you imagine the feeling? He personally received the Christ child. He “can die happy now”, for he has held God in his arms!

Here we are, 3 days from marking the passing of another year. Someone once said, "About the time you decide to make the most of your life, most of it is already gone." It’s true. Seems like the older you get, the faster time goes whizzing by. And before you know it you’re old and reliving your dreams in your head. And depression, or at least discouragement, sets in.

Maybe you have known someone who was so discouraged that life didn’t seem worth living anymore. I know of a man that, every time I visit him, I hear the same phrase over and over. “I don’t know how much longer I’m gonna be here.”

He feels he has nothing to live for. His childhood dreams are just that, dreams. He can hardly perform the simple functions that once gave him his reason for living. His body is crippled from a life of hard work and smoking so, in his eyes, he’s just waiting to die.

People sometimes feel so empty that don’t want to go on living. Maybe the death of someone close to you, a broken relationship, or some other tragedy has caused you to feel empty inside. Maybe you’ve prayed, "Lord, let me die, take me home. Life is more than I can handle."

Those are not fun times. Just like I tell that man when he says, “I don’t know how much longer I’m gonna be here”, it’s not up to you to decide when it’s your time to go. It is God’s to decide. You’ll go in God’s time. I tell this man that his work here is not done yet and while he thinks that he can’t do anything, God must have something for him to do. But he just grumbles some more.