The Anticlimax of Christmas Past

Simeon with the Christ Child in the Temple - Rembrandt

Sunday is already coming again. Before we get there, we will celebrate Christmas. This past Sunday we celebrated with our Sunday School children in the morning and then came back in the evening for a wonderful evening of scripture and singing in our annual Candlelight Service.

This coming Sunday feels like one we could miss. The story has been told, the songs have been sung, it feels like enough. We know it now.

Luke doesn't see it that way though. He wants the story to keep going. He wants us to see again, and again, that something amazing is going on here, that God has broken into the world. So he takes us to the temple, for the mundane purification rites normal for a first born son. But here again, now in the voices of Simeon and Anna we hear that this is no ordinary baby.

The story told by the angels to the shepherds, is reinforced by these two elderly watchers. It's good for us to hear that the good news is not only reserved for Christmas, but follows us into the regular patterns of our lives as well.,