Jesus and Me ... and the Cats

Luke 2:22-40 Greg Brown has a song called "Waiting."  Everybody's waiting for something:  the county fair; the return of a friend; a bus to take them to someplace better; a new job; a personal epiphany or spiritual enlightenment.  Everybody's waiting for something. When we wait, we have three options.  One is to ignore the possibility of positive changes and just lapse into a state of passive hopelessness, going about life as usual. The second is to wait, and then, out of frustration or impatience, take matters into our own hands.  If you remember the story of Abraham and Sarah, trying to fulfill God's promise of heirs to the childless couple by having Abraham sire a son by Sarah's maid, well, you know that usually doesn't work out very well. The third option is the one we see modeled by Simeon and Anna in this passage from Luke.  It is actively waiting in expectancy, in eager hope.  It's living with no doubt that what God has promised us, God

In those days Caesar Augustus declared that everyone throughout the empire should be enrolled in the tax lists. This first enrollment occurred when Quirinius governed Syria. Everyone went to their own cities to be enrolled.   Since Joseph belonged to David’s house and family line, he went up from the city of Nazareth in Galilee to David’s city, called Bethlehem, in Judea.   He went to be enrolled together with Mary, who was promised to him in marriage and who was pregnant.   While they were there, the time came for Mary to have her baby.   She gave birth to her firstborn child, a son, wrapped him snugly, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the guestroom.                                                          Luke 2:1-7 (Common English Bible) I didn't expect the phone call that came late one night in early March fourteen years ago.  Dad, even at 95, always bounced back so quickly when he got sick, but his cold had turned into pneumonia, and the next