“She recognized him…” Luke 2:38
In Luke 2 we read of Anna, once a young widow who had devoted her entire life to God. For more than 80 years she served faithfully at the temple, in fasting and prayer, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Messiah. She desperately longed to meet the Savior of her people, the Savior of her soul. And so, she waited.
She did not wait aimlessly, however. Anna waited in pursuit. She devoted herself to learning, to cultivating, to being with the one who created her.
Eventually the day came; the day that Mary and Joseph brought the baby Jesus to the temple. In that moment, Anna knew, and she began praising God.
“She recognized him and called out the truth,” author Sarah Bessey writes. “This is the mark of a soul in pursuit of Jesus. We recognize him.”
And he is here with us, too. We get glimpses of him in the children around us, and the people he puts in our path. We have moments of transcendence, where what could be explained as logical, we know is spiritual. We experience him in our grief and in our joy. Our soul delights in the chirping of the birds that greet us in the morning and the beauty of the stars that bid us good night. Normal, even ordinary moments somehow feel full.
And like Anna, if we’ll just pause, in those moments our souls remember something, too. We recognize him here.
