2010 NEW BEGINNINGS

Instead of the usual soliloquies about the end of the old year and the beginning of the new and resolutions and all that, I want to just jump right into the first study topic of the year: PRAYER.

For if there is anything important enough to resolve to do in the new year, I think for all of us it would be to pray…and specifically to pray more than ever before. Our families and our country are both in need of so much prayer, and then there are the families and countries elsewhere who need our prayers as well. Lots of praying needed to be done by lots of people who believe that their prayers are heard by God…and who believe especially that they are answered by God! So, my plan is to start out the year studying the Word of God for understanding as to why we pray and how to pray, for the Word of God is full of examples and instructions in this regard.

The woman to be highlighted first this year, as someone we all could learn something from regarding the subject of prayer, is Anna. Just Anna. We don’t know her last name, for last names were not all that popular back then, but she might have been known as Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, or Anna, the wife of...well...whatever her deceased husband’s name was...we really don’t know. We actually know very little about Anna, and, in fact, most of what we do know about her is compiled into the following two sentence description of an event that took place at the circumcision of Jesus, 8 days after his birth, as written in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verses 36-38:

“And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Aser: she was of great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity; and she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings, and prayers night and day. And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of Him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.”

What better woman to use as an example of prayer than Anna, widowed for most of her adult life minus the seven years she was married (prior to her husband’s seemingly untimely death), and spending who knows how many years in prayer? If the women in those days were married at the age of about 14 (maybe even 12), and Anna had been married seven years, and widowed another 84 years, then we can approximate that Anna was of very great age indeed: somewhere around 105.

While Luke doesn’t tell us when Anna first determined to remain in the temple day and night with prayers and fasting, I find it very interesting that after all of those years of prayer and fasting (most likely because of all those years of prayer and fasting) God used her at the late age of approximately 105 in such a grand manner: to confirm by prophecy the coming of the Messiah, the One who would redeem the Jews (actually to ALL those who looked for redemption in Jerusalem, Gentiles as well…did Anna know THAT?) We know that she was known as a prophetess, which tells us that she had already been used by God in the gift of prophesy prior to the circumcision of Jesus, and was known therefore by this particular gifting.

Perhaps, Anna, like Queen Esther, was born for just such a moment..."and she coming in that instant"...just to lend further solid confirmation to the many Old Testament prophecies of the birth of Jesus Christ. Maybe she even prayed and asked God to allow her to lay her eyes on the Messiah just once before she died, and maybe God honored her request and blessed her in that regard. Look at how she thanked God! Perhaps that's why she had reached such an old age. We just don't know. We know only that she fasted and prayed and prophesied....and in such was used by God in a great way. Quite extraordinary for a relatively unknown woman with no last name....whose life was dedicated to God!

And here I must digress for just a moment, to say that Anna reminds me of a small group of women I was acquainted with when I was in sixth grade in Houston, Texas. This group of women lived in a very small, old-style house right across the street from the public school I attended. The women were called “Cloistered Nuns”. I’m not sure how I came to know about them, since I was attending a public school at the time, not a Catholic school (even though I was raised Catholic), but somehow it came to my attention that they offered something sweet to eat to anyone who stopped by to visit. I tried not to intrude on them too often, but I was most definitely driven first and foremost by the lure of a large hunk of homemade chocolate cake being offered to me. The lure that was secondary to the cake, was the mysteriousness of women living together in such seclusion having dedicated their entire lives to God, for the sole purpose of prayer, cutting themselves off basically from society in order to do so; that was something I had a difficult time wrapping my mind around.

Each of the nuns must have been assigned a certain day of the week in which they were called upon to greet visitors, while the others remained attentive to their primary duty to pray somewhere in the back part of the house that none of us school children were ever allowed to see. There was a small chapel available for us to pray in as we entered the small house, and then there was the window, somewhat similar to a confessional, through which the cake or some other sweet offering was passed and through which you could clearly see and speak to the “receiving” Nun of the day.

It definitely formed a lasting memory for me, and one to which I turn now when I see Anna basically cut off from society and living in the temple day and night for the sole purpose of prayer….AND fasting. (No chocolate cake to be had there most likely!) Still, the mystery of what drives a woman (or a man for that matter) to spend most of their lives in prayer, in a very isolated environment no less, is something worth studying, in my opinion. And so be it!

Beginning with one of my most favorite of prayers: the prayer of Solomon dedicating the newly-built temple to God; found in the Old Testament, of course, Second Chronicles chapter 6. Chapter 6 is mostly Solomon’s prayer; chapter 7 is God’s response to Solomon’s prayer. Both prayer and response resonate very strongly to me (and always have) of man’s very stubborn and rebellious nature that leads him continually into captivity of some sort and of God’s deeply loving and forgiving nature towards us that causes Him to come to our rescue, time and time again….WHEN we turn to Him.

The Word has so much to say about prayer, and I hope at the end of this study to better understand why Anna (and my nuns) decided to dedicate their lives to this one specific service to God.

My first prayer must be, though, that this New Year will be a very blessed one...for all!