Are You Lonesome Tonight?
As we move into short days and long nights, it becomes easier to feel discouraged. If we are increasingly secluded (by weather and, this year, by governmental edict), we can experience genuine loneliness. I enjoy being alone, but I have a choice in the matter; others do not. Solitude occurs when we want to be alone; loneliness happens when friends and family are taken from us. Solitude soothes, whereas loneliness looms. Because God knows all about us, His Word speaks to us about the painful subject of loneliness. (I will be using this opening paragraph for each of the brief messages in this series. The following material will change daily.)
In Luke 2:21-35, we read of Simeon, another of God’s few at the first Christmas. His devout faith set him apart from the mostly corrupt priesthood that had turned the Temple into a place of profits rather than prophets. The forthright foretelling of Simeon thus stood out and included the stunning (verses 30-32 – Messiah would be available to all people) and the sobering (verse 35 – this Savior would die). Many today would consider Simeon’s devotion to God to be too extreme, too ascetic. He did not seem to belong in Jerusalem, but really it was all of the merely ritualistic religious people there who did not fit in spiritually. Simeon’s solitariness was thus far superior to the lucre-lusting legion. We marvel at the intensity of Simeon’s spiritual focus: once he had seen the infant Messiah, he was immediately ready to die (verses 26, 29). May we all be this lonely! We do not know if Simeon was young or old or if he did die that day or years later. What we do know is that the simplicity and strength of his faith is an exceedingly excellent example for each of us. Let us see God’s interventions in our lives – both large and little – as gracious indications that we are never alone.