Fasting and Prayer by Kim Reisman

Luke 2:25-40

The good news we take into the new year is that grace is trickling down and seeping upward before we ever realize it.

As we pray, we listen. We ask if there’s anything we need to hear, anything at all. And then we wait.

Faith is the art of waiting on active, unseen grace, like trusting that crocus spears are pushing upward through the dirt before we see them break through into the watery spring sunshine. If you can’t see how grace could possibly be at work in your life, close your eyes. Listen deeply.

This quiet waiting characterized two people who understood what it meant to live with expectant hope. The first was an old man named Simeon who had been waiting on God for a long time, trusting the Holy Spirit’s words that he would not die before seeing the Lord’s Messiah. He was not disappointed.

The second was an old lady – Anna – who spent a lot of time in her house of worship. Day and night she would worship with fasting and prayer, waiting on the promise of God. In the midst of her faith, she got to see the infant Messiah, got the privilege beyond all privileges of not just “holding the new baby,” but holding the New Baby.

Fasting and prayer train us to wait – sometimes for decades – to bear witness to new life. As you continue your fasting journey in this new year, I pray you would experience God’s grace trickling down and seeping upward. I pray that having experienced that unseen grace, you would bear witness to the new life that is found in Jesus Christ so that those around you will, like Simeon and Anna, finally see the Savior who has been given to all people.