December 14
Departing in peace
Luke 2:29
“Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace …”
In Guyana, every year on Christmas Day the media rush to the hospitals to take photographs of the Christmas Day babies and their mothers. Often, corporate representatives of companies that produce or supply baby products show up as well to distribute hampers to the mothers and promote their products. It is an exciting time for the mothers, the hospitals, and many of us who read their stories in the next day’s papers.
Many people die on Christmas Day too but there is no focus on that, life goes on. We don’t want to spoil a good birthday celebration with the sad news of death and dying but the reality of life is that it’s a mixed bag. The wise man in Ecclesiastes said that there is “A time to be born, And a time to die;” Ecclesiastes 3:2. But when there is joy in the house we seek to smother the sorrow.
The old Simeon, who we discussed yesterday, had no time for this. He had waited for a lifetime and was clearly on his last and knew it. So, in the middle of the joys of the birth, at the new mother’s first visit to the temple, Simeon holds the child and looks to God in prayer. He starts out with words about his own imminent death, “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, According to Your word;” our key verse Luke 2:29.
Anna, another forgotten person in the “Christmas story”, who also comes in on this scene, is old. It may not be clear if she was 84 years old, or if she had been a widow for 84 years, although the latter seems more likely from the plain reading of the text. Luke said that “She was of a great age.” No doubt, she too was at the end of her days, death again was in the presence of new life.
Simeon spoke to the issue of how he was going to die, in peace. Simeon, like Anna, spent all their lives interceding for the will of God to come to pass. Through their lifetimes the circumstances had changed and changed again. The social, political, and economic circumstances had gone one way and then the next, yet they kept praying for God’s salvation to show up. They lived, and waited all their lives to see God answer.
That faith to wait may seem easier then than it is today. We live in an age of instant gratification. Many in the younger generations especially are unable to embrace the idea of delayed gratification. Technology, of course, is a part of the complex cocktail of factors that has led us here. Instant gratification covers food and beverages, entertainment, communication, and everything else.
The contemporary Christian must find a way to live in a fast-paced culture while demonstrating that faith to wait. To relate to the people in the culture we have to move at the speed of the culture but to participate in God’s redemptive plan. That takes some thought and some deliberate steps on our part to begin to achieve the required balance.
God requires that we develop patience. There are a few reasons for this, but we could look at a couple. Patience is necessary for the development and full formation of our faith in God. Patience is also necessary because, in God’s vast eternal plan, there needs to be time for some things to be done.
Here is what James writes, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” James 1:2-4.
Peter gives us the next reason for patience. “But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:8-9
Faith exercised patiently over an extended period of time in the face of many trials is good for us, and is good because it gives others an opportunity to come to Christ and there is no App for that.
In this exercise of faith, we live in constant communion with God and are able to come to the end of our lives fulfilled. It is through this constant communion with God, over the long-term, that we are enabled to see what God is doing. Simeon and Anna could die in peace because their faith was rewarded in the end and they had seen God’s salvation. They saw God’s plan of salvation even though they weren’t going to be around to experience it, like Moses who didn’t make it across to the Promised Land.
When God answers, as Simeon and Anna saw, there are long-term implications for everything, and we know that we were a part of that. Whenever we die, suddenly or at the end of a full life, we should be confident that having participated with God during our lives, we could depart in peace.
Think on these things:
- Are you a patient person and are you able to develop a patient approach to life in the middle of the fast pace at which many expect us to live and work?
- What steps could you take to ensure that you do not lose sight of what God is at work doing while you live in today’s culture and with today’s technology?
- Are you living in such a way that you could approach death confident that you were involved in life the way God wanted?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we would strike the right balance between the culture and our faith and live lives in communion with God, participating in His redemption plan.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex
