Joshua and I, Ahuz*, are doorkeepers of the Temple. We greet people and try to make them welcome. There are visitors and strangers and, of course, we have our regulars. Like that old man over by the corner of sacrifice. We don’t know where he lives but it must be nearby. He’s always here as soon as the doors are open.
Then there’s Anna who seems to live in the Temple, in a dark, quiet place. We know her because she has good connections. She comes from the tribe of Asher and she’s the daughter of Phanuel and she’s a prophet, they say.
We’ve found out that the old man is called Simeon. He has a stillness about him which suggests that he’s a man of prayer. He behaves as if he loves God, which is more than most who come here! Others are more like politicians, self-seekers, people who believe not in God but in their own religious importance.
Old Simeon has just noticed me and he smiles and bows towards me, making me feel human, wanted, needed. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot the daughter of Phanuel who comes and grasps my cold hands and rubs them warm. It’s a kind gesture of gratitude for letting her wait.
I don’t really know what they are both waiting for but there is always an expectation about them. I once asked the old man, Simeon, “What are you doing here? What are you waiting for?” “Salvation”, he said quietly, “and a peaceful death.”
‘Salvation’, isn’t a word we hear in the Temple these days! That’s what Joshua said, when I told him. “I reckon they’re on a fool’s errand.” “Maybe”, I tell him, “but I’m not so sure. There’s a holiness about him and Anna, too. There’s wisdom as well, without any trace of self-boasting. They know things we don’t.” Joshua laughed. “I’ve told you, they’re wasting precious time. They haven’t much left.”
Then, it happened. A young woman and a caring man came into the Temple, carrying a little vulnerable baby. Purification. It’s like a thanksgiving after childbirth and an act of dedication. So they made their offering to God and then Simeon shuffled to stand next to them. Anna drew near as well. Interesting! Is this what they were waiting for? Odd, though. How could a baby bring Salvation and hope?
Simeon took the child into his arms and praised God. I quietly moved towards them, just as the old man began to speak. “…let me go in peace…I have seen your Salvation…” Love shone in his eyes and in Anna, too. I couldn’t make sense of it. How could a mere child be God’s fulfilment? Simeon spoke again of the child, who would be God’s light not only to us, the Jewish people, but also to Gentiles – non-Jews. You could see that the young couple were as perplexed as I was, but there was more. It was like a prophecy, about a future event, something about conflict the child would cause, some choosing for him, others against him. He would see into every heart; speaking of which, the young lady would also have her heart pierced as if by a sword. It would, without doubt, be a sword of pain and sadness but she seemed to smile a little as if she knew something we didn’t. Why didn’t Simeon’s word worry her? Nothing would break up her serenity. It was as if she already seemed to live with God.
Then Anna took the child from Simeon’s hands and held him close, cherishing the one of whom the prophets had spoken. They called him ‘The Messiah’ but this child was called, Jesus. Where they the same? Was he the one for whom, in the depths of all our hearts we too have been waiting?
For a moment, as we all stood facing the child, the Temple was filled with silence, but it was such a stillness that it felt as though it trembled with the very breath of God.
Salvation had come to the Temple that day. I, Ahuv*, found it in that little child and, like myriads who came to recognize him, I was changed and loved and saved!
[Mr G. Candlemass 2025]
*Ahuv translates as “being loved” or “beloved.” The word ahuv comes from the Hebrew root aleph-hei-vet, which means, “to love.”
Hawkshead Church in early morning mist. Photo by Gill Henwood.
This photo was taken by my friend, Gill Henwood and is of Hawkshead Church emerging from the morning mist. This mist speaks to me of ‘revealing’, of something that will become clearer as the mist rises; of a beauty present but not yet fully defined.
Today is the time the Christian Church remembers the Conversion of St. Paul, the moment when all that clouded his mind and darkened his thoughts, were lifted by an encounter with the Risen Christ. We are told of it in the Book of Acts, chapter 9 verses 1 to 19.
Paul or as he was then known, Saul, a zealous Jewish Rabbi, had made it his mission to persecute Christians, those Jews who had chosen to follow the teaching of the Apostles about Jesus. He was responsible for the death and imprisonment of many and was thus thwarting the work of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus.
Something had to be done to stop him and it was the Risen Christ who did so. As Paul travelled along the road to Damascus, the Risen Christ appeared and light flashed around him. Paul was blinded by the light and fell to the ground. It was as if a dark mist enveloped him and in the darkness Jesus challenged him, Why are you persecuting me?’ Paul asked who he was and the revelation came to him that it was Jesus. Paul’s heart was converted but though his eyes were opened, he could still not see. First, his spiritual blindness had to be lifted; something Jesus arranged and then Paul became the great champion of Christianity he was destined by God to be.
For me there is something autobiographical in Paul’s famous passage in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13. Having written his classic definition of ‘love’, He made the point that only love will carry us through to the heart of God and that is both our faith and hope. He referred back to his own lack of understanding of the power of God’s love (verse 8 following) and reminds us that on our spiritual journey we move, often haltingly, to a deeper knowledge of love, as God shares His divine love with us. At first our perception of God’s love is as if we are looking through a mirror dimly’ or as the King James Version puts it, through a glass darkly, but then, as God continues to reveal his Love to us, we shall one day meet Him as Love face to face.
Gill’s photograph of Hawkshead Church suggests to me another illustration of this. Our experience of God’s love for us, may seem at times to be as if we are looking through the mist of understanding. It contains all that will be revealed but we must let God work in our souls as he did in Paul’s. Then, slowly but surely, the mist will lift and the glorious vision will open our eyes and our hearts to a deep and abiding love. In the photo we already see the promise coming clearer. The scene contains all that needs to be revealed. So that is for us. If we open ourselves to the possibility of God lifting from us all that prevents His love to flourish, then it will become a reality.
The Conversion of Saint Paul
Brooding mist blurs edges of perception. Colours muted. A whisper of wind kisses the air rippling through the soul. Visibility impaired, a cloak of quietness drawn across the mind. Stilling all movement. Intentions passionately held, melt into deep darkness. Yet this is not the cause of fearfulness nor of despair. Out of the shadows, of seeing “through a glass darkly” there is a pinprick of growing light which slowly, perceptively, burns away the haze as new vision takes shape.
A Voice, crisp, gently directive, unfettered by illusion, beckons, touching eyes to see a wonder, “face to face.” The waypath is irrevocably changed.
Lakeland hills appearing like a desert. photo by Gill Henwood.
A Voice from the Desert ~ St. Antony of Egypt. (f.d. 17th January)
There are significant dates in our lives, which can lead to a change of direction and a new way of living.This was very true of St. Antony of Egypt, also known as ‘the great’. Antony was born in Egypt in 250AD, the son of a prosperous farmer. His family were Christian and he grew up hearing the Gospel read each Sunday in his local church. His parents died and Antony gained a rich inheritance which he shared with his sister.
The significant day in his life was when he was 20. He went to church one Sunday morning and he heard the Gospel including the words: Go, sell all you have, and give to the poor; and come, follow me. Antony heard God calling to him through those words and he left the church, made provision for his sister and then sold all his goods and gave the money to the poor. He then left home and, after a time of spiritual preparation, he eventually set up a simple hut in the Desert of Egypt where, for the rest of his long life, he lived in solitude and prayer. He became one of the founders of the monastic life.
We might think that Antony was rather extreme in his interpretation of the Gospel. After all, how many times have we heard those words and not acted upon them in that way. Yet Antony knew that he had heard God’s voice. For him this was a clear sign of his vocation and he had the courage to respond. He lived a life dedicated to prayer, fasting, daily recitation of the psalms and to combating those forces in the world that are against God, including personal temptations and the battle for true holiness. Others were attracted to his way of life and communities began to be formed of people who sought a pure prayerful life. Antony became a spiritual guide to many, including streams of Christians living in towns and cities and who came to him for guidance. Some of that guidance was collected as ‘words’ which remain available to us today in collections of sayings’ of the Desert Fathers and Mothers.
Antony died in 356, over 100 years old. By the time he died he had learned the most important thing that every Christian must learn—he learned how to love God and to respond through this love to the immense and unconditional love that God had for him, as God has for all of us.
Few of us today are likely to be called to live in a deserted place, though those who have found time to do so, even for a short while, know just how valuable and precious that time is for communing with God without distraction. Some, of course, are called, like Antony, to live as members of Religious Communities as monks and nuns. But all of us are called to dedicate our lives to God and to serve him in whatever way is right for us. We can’t get away with saying something like, “it’s all right for Antony and the other desert dwellers.. They had a spiritual greatness that few of us can even get near.” Actually they wouldn’t claim to be specially great. But they did recognize the greatness of God and they wanted to respond to this in some way. Saints are important for us simply because they are ordinary Christians like us but who knew the Gospel to be extraordinary. It changes lives. If it doesn’t then we wouldn’t be Christians at all. Because it changed Antony’s life, the Church became more Godly and the world more lovely. That can be just as true for us today. Listen and let God tell you how.
Tau Cross. Symbol of St. Antony of Egypt.
St Antony, You had everything. Then one day you heard the voice of God. “Antony, go sell all you possess and have nothing.” So you did, and then you had everything.
The With-ness of God, a reflection on Luke 2:41-52, by The Revd Piers Northam.
The phrase that particularly strikes me in Luke’s account of Jesus, as a 12-year-old, in the Temple is: His mother treasured all these things in her heart. It’s a phrase we hear at Christmas, when the shepherds come to Bethlehem and find Jesus lying in the manger: When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. I love the way that Mary takes these words and events and turns them over, treasuring them and pondering on them. There is the sense that she is slowly piecing together the real importance of her son. Before his birth, she was told by the Angel Gabriel that her son, conceived by the Holy Spirit, was himself to be holy and to be the Son of God – but of course that’s still a lot to fully comprehend. When Jesus is born, the shepherds arrive and tell his parents about the angels appearing to them on the hillside outside Bethlehem; later, Mary and Joseph will present their son at the Temple, and Simeon and Anna will speak strange words about him; then the Magi will come with their peculiar gifts – all these words and events hinting at the life her son will lead. And now, in this scene in the Temple when Jesus is twelve years old, we see him speaking strange words himself: sitting with the teachers and referring to the Temple as ‘my Father’s house’ – and so, by implication, specifically referring to God as his Father. More mysterious things for Mary to take to her heart, to treasure and to ponder over…
Another word – or rather the name – that we hear at Christmas is Emmanuel. In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth we hear him quoting the prophet Isaiah: All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with us.’
God-with-us. That’s the extraordinary and particular thing about the Christian faith. Where other religions worship a god or gods who are other; who are distant and out there, far away, we believe that God who came to earth for us; and ‘lived on earth and went about among us’ to use that familiar phrase. God – in Jesus – became human and so understands our lived experience intimately; and, in the Holy Spirit, continues to live with and in us. That name Emmanuel is hugely important since it encapsulates what lies at the very heart of our relationship with God.
Ali’s story
Last week, a friend shared an article which reflects on the experience of Emmanuel / God with us. It’s written by Ali Kendall, a nurse living in Hampshire who shares her family’s story and what she refers to as God’s With-ness – God’s being with them. Things haven’t been easy for Ali and her family. She spent years nursing in London at the Royal Marsden before moving to Hampshire to start a family. Initially, this was hard for them, but she and her husband Matt did have a first son, Joseph and all seemed well. Then her husband started to have a series of what were to become regular seizures, which stopped his work as a teacher and completely changed their lives. At the same time, they had tried for another baby and Zachary was born – along with the unexpected news that he had Downs Syndrome. She writes:
I remember thinking ‘we were already meandering off script, but we are well and truly off-piste now’. Life’s going to look different. Very different. It’s just gone from hard to harder. My husband has a chronic illness and disability and now I have a newborn whose challenges are not yet known to me, but likely to be significant.’ A few years later Zachary was diagnosed with autism.
Ali then goes on to say: Life is beautiful and life is hard. Beautiful-hard. They both co-exist, like dancers, weaving themselves in and out of our lives. The joy is that God is with us and others have joined in. […] Our day to day is transformed by withness; when friends come along side us, and travel with us for a while at the slower pace that we’ve been forced to go, navigating the hurdles and the curve balls.
Matt’s seizures are debilitating. The daily grind of a chronic illness is often lived in secret, behind closed doors, in the hidden places. Parenting a child with special needs, while trying to be everything you want to be to your other child, is exhausting and can feel lonely. On a bad day it can all feel crushingly hard, but on a good day it can feel like you are in on the most beautiful secret of watching your family do life differently with our challenges and unique way of being.
What strikes me the most about Ali’s account is the way that she has discovered those secret moments – moments that she has been pondering in her own heart – where she notices the beauty (even in the midst of the difficulty and the challenge); where she notices the withness of God… She goes on to say:
Being with someone who is not finding life easy or is trying to live in a world not set up for them can take you to what I now call the “secret places”. The places you might never have chosen to be in. […] Coaxing a child with autism to watch a Christmas show you have paid good money to enjoy. Our seats, surrounded by people and lots of noise, make it all too overwhelming for Zachary. So we sit in the quiet, on the stairs, where no-one pays to sit, watching the show from our secret place. We hug and cuddle quietly as the show goes on and it feels somehow almost a sacred moment. These secret hidden moments are where the gold is really forged. Where the love grows deep. Withness blesses the person being held and the person holding.
Withness, as she puts it, blesses both the person who is being accompanied and the person who is sitting with them or holding them or offering their support. Because in doing so, they are being Emmanuel to them. And Ali fully acknowledges that this is hard and costly – but ultimately, but it’s a cost that is worth it:
[…] it’s hard. Beautiful and hard. But being with people mattered enough for Jesus to come to earth to embody “Emmanuel”. And you get taken to those secret places you might not have ever seen had it not been for the journey the other takes you on.
‘Being with’ takes you to those secret moments which become sacred.
Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, says, ‘Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly.’ He’s inviting us to treasure Christ’s words and ponder them in our hearts, for living them out brings unexpected riches and secret joys. As I reflected on the 12-year-old Jesus, sitting with the teachers in the Temple, holding his own with a wisdom beyond his years, I was struck by the final part of Ali’s story:
[Joseph,] my eleven-year-old, has heard me say so many times “we are with you” to Matt as his body shakes into another seizure. Matt is usually unable to speak, often he looks afraid, and his usually strong body is jerking with such strength we need to keep him safe. But “I am with you” has become what I say. And I mean it. It’s all I can offer in those moments. I can’t take it away, but I can sit with him in the pain and disappointment of another disrupted plan, another unfinished conversation, another fun trip cut short, another day where we watch the world bustle on as we crumple to the floor.
My Joseph has learnt the art of being with. He will often silently take my husband’s hand, and my heart melts when I hear the strength and tenderness in his words,“I am with you Daddy. We are here.” As Jesus showed his Emmanuel to me, and the beauty and peace that brings, we can show it to each other.
‘I am with you…’ Young Joseph has heard those words and they now dwell in him… Richly…
Ali’s story has moved me profoundly – I find my thoughts returning to her and her family and I sense they will continue to do so. Above all, it is the way that she has pondered on her experiences and has noticed Emmanuel / God-with-us in both the joyous times and the hard ones. She has found those secret moments and treasured them in her heart. It’s something that God invites us all to do, so I pray that we will all take time to ponder and to notice Emmanuel/ God-with-us in our own lives – and at times to respond to the call to be God-with-us to others… God is always with us – but we have to take the time to notice where – and in whom – He is to be found…
Mr G's Ponderings 