Reading this passage at Christmas this year, I noticed for the first time the accuracy and breadth of the information Simeon had about the Messiah, and I am awe-struck at how much knowledge God had given to Simeon! He knew the timing of the coming of the Messiah, which was specific knowledge that God did not trust to anyone else. Simeon knew much of the nature of the Messiah, as he praises God for the One who would come to bring peace. He even had a foreshadowing of the life of the Messiah, as he warns Mary that this child would break her heart. It appears that, of all the people in Israel, only this one elderly "nobody" could be trusted with this magnificent preview of what God was going to do. Even Anna, who was also waiting in the temple, could recognize what God had done, but she didn't have an awareness of what God was going to do in the same way as did Simeon.

What would we have done if God had trusted that much knowledge to us? Just fantasize about all we might have accomplished! By combining this knowledge with the scriptures, we might have persuaded some of the Pharisees and Sadducees to recognize the Messiah when Jesus came to the temple, so Jesus might have had the support of influential leaders as he was growing up. We would have been eager to find like-minded people to ourselves, so that we could have organized a large welcoming party when Mary and Joseph came to the temple. Maybe we could have spent some time with the shepherds and helped spread their incredible story across Judah. We could have written books, spoken at gatherings, and traveled across all of Israel telling about the true nature of the coming Redeemer, sowing the seeds of revival decades before John the Baptist.

While we don't know much about Simeon, what we do know indicates that he did none of these things. Instead of carrying this message to others, Simeon prayed and listened to God. He had been patiently waiting for years until the day the Holy Spirit led him to the temple to see the Christ child. As I was pondering what I thought was Simeon's lack of initiative, it occurred to me that Simeon was too wise and too spiritually mature to use this good news from God in the ways I mentioned above. Simeon was obedient to God with this incredible knowledge, allowing God to direct Simeon's ways when God was ready to do so. It was Simeon's obedience that allowed God to trust him with this news--and it is my lack of obedience and my eagerness to set my own course instead of allowing God to lead that prevents God from trusting me with more wisdom.

This is an unfamiliar concept to modern Christians: Simeon didn't "do" anything, which meant he was obedient to God. We usually think just the opposite, and measure our obedience to God by what we do. Often, this means we fail just when we think we have succeeded, because we follow our reasoning of what we think God wants rather than listening, and even waiting, for God's plan. We are certain that time is short and there is so much to be done, so we apply our limited strength to achieve what we can while we can. We might even draw our misguided understanding from Luke 10:2, when Jesus said, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few", so we might vow to be the busiest laborers we can be. However, in the rest of Luke 10:2, Jesus went on to say "therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." As illogical as it might appear to me, the Lord of the harvest might choose to send me to the edge of the field instead of the center, or have me sharpen tools for other laborers, or sit and wait for reasons completely unknown to me.

Simeon understood that being a Godly person meant listening carefully to God, obeying God's instructions, and, most of all, trusting that God's Way is always best, no matter how strange it appears to us. Being a Godly person means we cannot gauge our success accurately by what we do. Instead, our success is in how we listen, in how we wait, and in how we allow God's plans to replace our own.