Luke 2:36-38

Hope is an ingredient temperamental to measurement. Hope that is prolonged or deficient will not be enough to generate the strength we need for the waiting. Hope that burns brightly like a flash and then dissipates leaves no warmth for the long winter ahead. Even a good measure of hope that has been used time and time again can become weary and unable to muster the stamina for the long journey. 

Hope that is abundant to an aching heart is repulsive. It becomes a weight, not a salve, if it is more than the heart can bear. 

Because more often than we wish to even dare admit, it hurts to hope. Hope might be accompanied by a loss or a promise unfulfilled. It is the reunion with a loved one. It is a job promotion. The birth of a child. A marriage. 

Or for the cancer to go into remission. The bills to be paid. The reconciliation of a broken relationship. Or perhaps it is the hope in what is not seen, the eternal promises of heaven. 

As we prepare for the Christmas season through the Advent themes, we can glean a lot about hope from the life of Anna. 

Anna, whose name means grace or favor of God, was a prophetess from the tribe of Asher. This tribe’s land was originally in the northwest part of Israel, along the coast. Wealthy because of oil and crops produced. However from the time the Israelites settled in the land until the birth of Jesus, Northern Israel had been fought over multiple times and the people were scattered throughout. 

Anna was married for seven years before her husband passed away. Perhaps she was 14, and she became a widow at the young age of 21. Anna would have returned to her father’s house to live and be provided for. Similar to Tamar or Ruth, who also became young widows with empty arms.

I wonder what Anna’s life was like after the death of her husband.  I wonder if, during her young widowhood, Anna hoped for another suitor to come along to redeem her. Her husband’s brothers, if he had any, were technically obligated to marry her and give their brother an heir. I wonder if loneliness or hopelessness ever started to creep in. I wonder if she battled depression, or if she questioned how she was “favored by God” in the midst of her circumstances. I can only imagine how she must have mourned the life she thought she would live between the years when her eyes were bright and the years that her forehead lines creased deeply. 

Phanuel, meaning face of God, was her father. Moses and Elijah both experienced God’s presence in powerful ways, but neither saw His face. Perhaps Anna’s father’s name’s meaning is an important clue to understanding God’s ultimate purposes for her life. 

Perhaps she worked alongside her parents, happily caring for nieces and nephews until they, too, had grown to be adults and no longer needed her. She likely cared for her aging parents with compassion and then buried them.

At some point, she turned her eyes to the temple and devoted her life to it. As a prophetess, she was called by God to be a leader and an example in all manner of truth and spiritual guidance. 

As a woman, she could only enter the court of women, which was an exterior portion of the complex. She worshipped, fasted, and prayed night and day. I can only imagine what fervor would drive an 84 year old woman to this level of devotion. 

Maybe she mourned with God over those whose lives did not reflect how God called them to live. Maybe she remembered the promises for a Messiah, and her heart began to stir with a renewed sense of longing. 

Was she not yearning for something? Was she longing for Jerusalem’s freedom from Rome? Or did she see beyond that and long for Israel’s redemption for their sins? Would she have ever imagined that she was hoping for the same thing as another barren woman with the same name who wept, fasted, and prayed at the tabernacle steps centuries before? When Hannah’s son, Samuel, was born, he was destined to become an important prophet and leader for Israel. But Anna was praying for a better prophet and leader. She would indeed see the face of God in the sweet skin of baby Jesus when Mary and Joseph brought him to the temple for his dedication. 

Her many prayers had been answered. Her longings. Her hopes. Here was the redemption of Jerusalem. 

Anna’s obvious response was to give thanks, praise, and share the good news to everyone who would hear. She was afterall, more than favored by God to be a witness to this beautiful miracle and expression of Love in the flesh. 

My hunch is that your heart is yearning for something entering this advent season. Perhaps it is the full redemption of the earth, and along with creation you are groaning for its return to perfect completeness when Christ returns. Perhaps you are praying earnestly for the eternal salvation of a child, a parent, a sibling or a friend. Perhaps it is more tangible, felt in your empty bank account, in your barren belly, or the lonely ache that can haunt this season when life shifts relationships in unexpected ways. 

Whether Anna longed for a return to married life or children, we won’t know this side of heaven. But we do know that in time her heart turned to hope for the Messiah’s advent. And in this she was not disappointed. 

Father, give us strength to have hope that is long enough and strong enough for the journey of faith that you have us on. We put our faith in you, trusting in you to come and redeem all things.