Advent 2022: Wednesday, November 30

November 30, 2022

Life is not necessarily about us. We are not the central characters of the story. 

Maybe the greatest things I do prove to be great and consequential indeed. Maybe. Or I am simply a minor character, and the way I play a role in history is simply by being a friend to one who goes on to play a minor role of teaching the teacher of the one who will do something “great…” or even some even lesser role. But that too, is good. 

For Simeon, one of the great saints of Israel, it was enough merely to see, and to see only the beginning of the most important life to be lived in the history of humankind. To be the center, the main character, to play an important role—that is not up to us, not in the least. Even to see, to witness, the great events of history is beyond our ability. 

We can hope for these things, invite these things through our hunger and thirst for righteousness, lives spent in contemplation of the word of God, and faithful obedience. But this at least we can do—to pour over Scripture, longing, as a second Simeon, for the return of our Lord.

Merry Christmas!

Tim Seeling, elder