awaiting the messiah

What does it mean to wait for the Messiah? 

For those who were alive when Jesus was born, this waiting looked different for many. There were people like Simeon and Anna, faithfully waiting on the Messiah, who were blessed with the first glimpses of His life. There were people who were waiting for something specific like the Pharisees and Priests, who missed Jesus’ birth because the Messiah did not come in the way they expected. Then there were people like the Magi who did not even know they were waiting but were some of the first to greet the Messiah. We often find ourselves in one of these categories when we are in a season of waiting. 

Simeon and Anna, whose story is found in the second chapter of Luke, were faithful and devout Jews who had dedicated themselves to contemplative lives in the Temple where Jesus would be presented. Both humbly awaited the Messiah, sustained by a promise that they would not pass from this world before greeting Him. In typical God fashion, Jesus shows up at the very end, an infant brought by Mary and Joseph to be consecrated to the Lord. This divine meeting was possible because of the patience of Simeon and Anna as well as the faithfulness of Mary and Joseph. When has God shown up for you because you faithfully waited? 

The Pharisees and Priests, though we may consider them faithful and devout like Simeon and Anna, were actually quite different. Whereas Simeon and Anna’s faithfulness and devout practices came from a place of humility and motivated by a love of God, the Pharisees and Priests were depicted as practicing their faith from a place of pride and motivated by power. They were the gatekeepers of who was allowed near the Holy of Holies, who was allowed to read the words of the Torah, and who was ceremoniously clean or unclean. Ironically, in their pride in their own learnedness and dedication to the Law, they were the ones to miss the Holy of Holies incarnate as prophesied by their Torah. They were looking for a powerful leader, a king of kings, a militant leader. They were not looking for an illegitimate baby out of the poor and despised town of Nazareth. What gifts from God have you missed because they came in a form unrecognizable to you because of your own pride or pain?

Finally - The Magi. These Priests or Wise Men, probably of the Zoroastrian religion, were not really waiting on anything. They were following their own religious practices of consulting the celestial landscape for divine messages around their own prophecies. The faithfulness of these Magi to their own practices brought them face to face with the Judeo-Christian Messiah, and they could not help but recognize this child’s Divinity and Regency. When have you been surprised by God by something you did not even know you were waiting for?

Seasons of waiting are hard. We see myriad examples in the Bible of not waiting and the devastation that can result (think Abram and Sarai in Genesis 16). The miracle of God is the ways in which He continues to love us and give to us, even when we miss it or take it for granted or refuse to wait. May you find patience, hope, and faith in your seasons of waiting.