Your Faith Journey - Finding God Through Words, Song And Praise

If you are sitting there thinking I have heard those names before…Anna and Simeon…it’s because some years, we get this gospel reading the Sunday after Christmas, and some years when Feb 2 is a Sunday, we hear them anew…now we are not that far removed from the last Christmas, but for a variety of reasons, at least for me, it feels likes Christmas and our celebration of the birth of Jesus seems like forever ago… So it is on this somewhat chilly, very snowy Sunday morning we hear of these two figures…Anna and Simeon who further the story of the baby born in a manger no matter if that feels like just yesterday or forever ago.  Some pastors may go straight for the joy that Anna and Simeon much have felt…playing up their child-like joy at seeing Jesus, face-to-face.  I never want to be guilty of diminishing joy, but my own experience is that joy is often not as joyful as it could be unless it has engaged in a long, drawn-out stare down with something that threatens to push it out of sight--joy often vanquishes s