Verse of the Day for October 14

We started this fortnight with Simeon in the temple, waiting for something he had been promised he would live to see. This is the day it happens.

A poor couple comes in with a baby and the cheaper of the two permitted offerings, which tells you their income. Nothing about the scene announces itself. Simeon takes the child in his arms.

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace. He is not asking to die. He is saying that the thing which held him at his post has been delivered, and he can stand down.

The word Luke uses is the one for releasing someone from duty. Simeon has understood his whole long wait as a watch he was keeping, and he is now formally asking to be relieved of it.

He held it. That is the detail I cannot get past. He did not see it from a distance or hear about it from someone else. He got to put his arms around it.

Not every wait ends like this, and the Bible is honest enough elsewhere to say so. But some do, and they end quietly, in a room with nobody important in it.

It arrived carried by strangers who could only afford two birds.