Just one look!

No sooner do we get the baby born on Christmas, than two days later we have the family in the temple for the presentation of the child to the Lord. The story focuses on those two temple fixtures: Simeon and Anna. Every church or place of worship has them. The people who just hang out there and do stuff. Most of the time nobody knows what they do. They fix the candles. They fill the water jugs. They take out the trash. They fix the broken door. They just are there. Simeon and Anna. They are there because they have this great passion to be there when it happens. They want to see it from the beginning. They have this absolute faith that God will move in history for the redemption of his people, and they want to participate from the moment it starts. Anna was 84 years old and it says she never left the place. She was going to be first in line when it happened.
The story does not say what made this child so different. There is no explanation as to what caught Simeon's and Anna' eyes, but suddenly there he was, and they were satisfied. Just the one look and they yearnings were fulfilled. They had seen the one who in whom God was acting to redeem his people.
For many of us it is a hard story to understand. Most of us are not looking or waiting for God to move in history with that kind of endurance. We expect our blessings from God on a much more immediate basis. We want God to do it now or the heck with it. We talk about wanting world peace or everybody to love everybody, but one looks long and hard for those for whom that hope is the central fact of their being. Nor is our longing for peace as corporate at Simeon's and Anna"s. Most of the time my longings and passions are for a much smaller group. Nor is it likely that we would feel like we had received what we were waiting for if all we got was a glimpse of a baby.
But maybe we did get a picture of that kind of moment in the faces of those African American Senior Citizens who struggled to get to the polls this November and who, on Election night as Obama stood on that stage, had tears streaming down their faces. All their lives they had waited and hoped for the coming of the day that they would see a black person elected as President. Vance County had seen the same thing when they saw a black man elected to the position of Sheriff. The position of power which had always been the hammer of the law that oppressed them. But this was so much more. This was enough to see that moment. "Now let thy servant depart in peace for I have seen with mine own eyes the deliverance of my people."
One of the most difficult parts of the Christian story is that so often God is a minimalist. Oh, there are passages that talk about God pouring out his blessings "pressed down and overflowing," but there are just as many stories where all his disciples get is just a glimpse, just one look, just one moment, and it is enough.