I’ll Call It Love

When, in the fullness of time, God acted decisively for the world’s salvation, He did not establish a new nation worthy of receiving Him. No, He came into the world through that same nation whose people often had grown weary of waiting, and had more or less given up on the whole idea of the Messiah’s coming. Again and again we read in the Old Testament of how the children of Israel were fascinated by the exotic religions of the surrounding nations. We read of how they bowed down before golden idols that offered them more excitement than the dusty old promises the Lord had long ago made to Abraham. There were notable exceptions, of course, as Luke tells us in today’s Gospel Lesson: “There lived in Jerusalem at the time a certain man named Simeon. He was just and pious, and awaited the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It was revealed to him that he would not experience death…