“She came up and began giving thanks to God, and continued to speak of Him to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.” Luke 2:38
If I could sit down with someone who lived during the birth of Jesus, I’d choose Anna.
You may wonder, Who is Anna? Though she is on the periphery of the Christmas story, I treasure Anna’s story. Like the women who submit their stories to Sacred Story, Anna is a brave yet ordinary woman who declares God’s faithfulness to her generation and beyond.
If we are not careful, it can be easy to breeze over Anna’s story and miss all that she has to offer. We are told in Luke 2:36-38 that Anna is present in the temple when teenage mother Mary and her husband Joseph arrive in Jerusalem from Bethlehem eight days after the birth of Jesus. As new parents, they fulfill the requirements of the Law, presenting their newborn son and the required purification offering.
The book of Luke describes Anna as an 84-year-old widow who serves continually in the temple by worshipping and praying. She also serves as a prophetess in the faith community. Perhaps she daily pours out words of encouragement and exhortation to those who long for deliverance from oppressive Roman rule and daily hardship. Only a few women in the Old Testament, like Miriam and Deborah, hold the title of prophetess. Anna is strong in the Spirit and appears to hold a place of honor among the religious leaders of her day.
Now that we know who Anna is, let’s look at her story. In three verses, we are given a glimpse of her heartache, her heartbeat, and her heart’s delight.
Her heartache is described in Luke 2:36-37: “… having lived with her husband seven years after marriage, and then a widow to the age of eighty-four.”
Questions immediately pop into my mind.
Oh Anna, if you married at an average age of 15, what is it like to be widowed at 22?
How did your husband pass away?
Do you have kids?
What is it like being a widow for over 60 years in a culture where women are often marginalized?
How has your faith become stronger in the face of loss?
What promises from former prophets do you hang on to about the coming Messiah?
Heartache can press a woman into a deeper experience of the Lord’s comfort, peace, and presence. I am certain this is true in Anna’s life because her heart beats for the kingdom to come. A kingdom where the Messiah will reign with justice and mercy. Where all tears will be wiped away. She longs for restoration of what God has always intended the nation of Israel and mankind to be.
I know Anna’s heart beats for the things of God because she is keenly aware of what brings delight to Him. Through many decades, she has trained her spiritual eyes to see beyond the circumstantial and find abiding joy in the promises of God, even as her wrinkles grow deeper and arthritis has made it hard to kneel.
She recognizes the Holy Infant who is anointed as the Messiah as the spiritual leader Simeon holds Jesus and prophesies over him. Anna gives thanks to God, bearing witness to the identity of the Promised Child. And out of her overflow of delight in the Lord, she spreads the news to all those who will listen to the hope found in Jesus Christ.
This Christmas season let’s seek to be like Anna:
- To faithfully seek God into our elderly years even when heartaches threaten to rob us of our confidence in Him
- To ask God to use our heartaches to mold our hearts to beat with His longings for restoration of brokenness
- To ask God to give us eyes to look to the Savior each day so that we might delight in Him and His promises
- To take our delight in Him to others by sharing the message that Jesus is the only hope in this world and the next
Consider taking 10-15 minutes before Christmas arrives to pray these character qualities over yourself and your faith community. May the Spirit impress on your heart this Christmas how much your story matters—even when it feels ordinary.
—Laura Wilcox is the Founder and Executive Director of Sacred Story Ministries and the co-author of Beautiful Surrender: Singleness and Marriage in the Book of Ruth and Living Your Story: 10 Biblical Principles That Matter.
—Photo by Tamara Govedarovic on Unsplash
