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Prior to his death in 2004, my Daddy was a person who made things happen. He was a man of vision and action and it seems that God cut me from the same piece of cloth. That can be good, but it can also have its downside, especially when God has ordained a quiet period of waiting in my life. People like my father and I DO NOT wait well.
As I abide in a season of quietness and waiting at this moment, I am reminded of some people in the Bible who were forced to wait in the quietness. We find one of their stories in Luke 2: 25-32 and we will take a couple of days to examine the life of Simeon. In Luke 2: 25 – 27a we find the following from the New Living Translation:
“At that time there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon. He was righteous and devout and was eagerly waiting for the Messiah to come and rescue Israel. The Holy Spirit was upon him and he revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. That day the Spirit led him to the Temple.”
There are several things that stand out to me in these verses. First, the Bible says “at that time there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon”. At what time? What was going on? Well, for Simeon and the Jewish people, not much. There had been the strange situation with Zechariah a year or so ago, when he claimed to have seen and talked with an angel, but other than that, God had been conspicuously quiet around Jerusalem for generations. No word from God for over 400 years. No prophecies. No miracles. Nothing. The people whom the prophets had said were the ‘chosen’ people felt abandoned by God. In fact, it had been so long since God spoke that many of them had decided that ‘chosen’ really did not mean much.
Does this sound familiar to you? It does to me. I am in a very quiet time of waiting on the Lord in the ministry that He has entrusted to me. Although it has only been a few months of this quietness, it seems as though it has been much longer. My tendency is to do something to make things happen; to shake things up. I know that God has a purpose in this time of waiting and silence, still Satan has tried so hard to get me to believe that it is all for nothing…that God has abandoned me and that I have no usefulness in the kingdom. Yet, I cling to the last word I heard from God and He has been so faithful to send me friends and Bible studies and music that speak words of encouragement to my heart straight from the heart of God.
We are also told in these verses that Simeon was ‘righteous’ and ‘devout’, which meant that he followed the Jewish laws. He was a regular at the temple and engaged in the Jewish feasts and sacrifices, keeping the law to the utmost. Sometimes it is in the midst of our righteousness and devoutness that we can feel most abandonded by God when He deems a period of quiet waiting for us. ‘But Lord, I’m doing everything you asked. I’m serving, I’m loving, I’m giving. Why this silence? Why this waiting?’
Come back on Tuesday and we will continue to examine Simeon’s time of silent waiting.
