The Messiah Anna Longed For

Today, we’ve reached the halfway point in our journey with Anna. I’ve really been enjoying the research and getting to know this amazing woman of God.

We’ve learned a bit about what it was like to be a widow. It wasn’t simply losing your husband that made it difficult. It was the role of the family in finding a new husband for the young widow that could turn ordinary grief (bad enough) into a nightmare.

We’ve learned that life in the temple was nothing like life in a church. It definitely wasn’t anything like a quiet convent or monastery! Nope. It was noisy, smelly and somewhat chaotic.

And most recently, we delved into Anna’s heritage in the tribe of Asher. Without the godly King Hezekiah’s invitation and without her ancestor humbling himself to take his family to Jerusalem for the Passover, Anna would never have existed.

We’ve also been looking through the Old Testament prophecies about the Christ and how they related to Anna, or how she would have reacted to them.

The approach has mostly been sequential in its address of Scripture. Yesterday, we reached the first prophecy in the book of Isaiah.

There’s a lot in Isaiah regarding the Messiah, so we’ll stay in this book of Scripture for at least the next week and perhaps as long as the next two weeks. (It doesn’t hurt that it’s my favorite book of the Bible!)

But this group of posts on Anna is somewhat fluid at this stage. If those who are reading these posts are curious about a specific area, let me know. Or if reading one or more posts raised questions, please ask them.

We will continue to get acquainted with Anna… together.