By now I’m sure there are many Christmas presents wrapped under your Christmas tree. Which ones are the kids and the grandkids most excited about? My guess is… it’s the biggest one! This is because they haven’t yet learned one of life’s greatest lessons - that sometimes the most valuable gifts come in the smallest, simplest, most humble of packages.

I think the story of Simeon is often overlooked as a part of the Christmas story. But I also think it’s one of the most important parts of the Christmas story, because of what Simeon is able to see in the gift of a little baby boy.

In the story, Simeon is a righteous man who has been told by the Holy Spirit that he will not die until he sees the Messiah. So, on what seems to be another ordinary day, the Holy Spirit nudges Simeon to go to the temple. There he sees a happy young couple dedicating their firstborn son to God, as was required by the law. Certainly he has seen this hundreds of times before. But today is not as ordinary as it first seems.

Simeon sees an ordinary couple with their newborn son, but what he sees in their son is anything but ordinary. In this tiny baby, Simeon sees the promised Messiah he has been waiting for. He sees the salvation of humanity. He sees the One who has come to bring light to a dark world.

I have often wondered, how did he see all of this in a baby boy? How did he know… this is the Messiah we’ve all been waiting for? And I think the answer is much simpler than we realize - Simeon waited on God, eagerly, yet without expectation.

To say it another way, Simeon never assumed to know how God was going to do things. So when God ultimately did something, questioning the way in which it was done never even entered his mind! Simeon saw it, believed it, accepted it, and he praised God for the Messiah he now held in his arms.

Too often I’ve come to God with my own expectations and my assumptions. If I’m honest, there have been times when I was disappointed when the gift wasn’t as big as I expected it to be. And I fear that I’ve even missed out on what God was doing because it didn’t look like what I wanted or expected.

The birth of my Saviour Jesus reminds me that our great God often works in the smallest of ways. So this Christmas, and always, I want to have the eyes and the faith of Simeon. I want to see and believe that God’s grand gifts often come in the smallest and humblest of packages. I want to see the glory, the beauty, the power, and the potential in the smallest things. I want to see it in the most unexpected people.  And I want to praise God for working through the most ordinary, surprising, and unexpected ways.