The Promise Simeon Held Onto

Thoughts on Luke 2:22–39

At approximately 11 AM on April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese tank number 390 crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon. Within hours, Hanoi radio declared that the nation had been reunited and peace had come to Vietnam.

But sometimes peace arrives quietly.
No trumpet blasts. No diesel engines pouring out black smoke. No headlines. No fireworks. Just a baby being carried into the temple by tired parents—as hundreds of families had done before.

On that day, in that temple, a promise was carried in wearing swaddling clothes.

One old man had been waiting for that moment all his life. His name was Simeon. And when he took that baby in his arms, he realized who he was holding.

And he began to sing.

Luke recorded the lyrics to Simeon’s song, and he invites us to listen:
“Sovereign Lord, as You have promised,
You now dismiss Your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen Your salvation…”
—Luke 2:29–30

Simeon sang in what looked and felt like an ordinary moment at the temple. Mary and Joseph arrived with two pigeons, the offering of the poor, obeying the Law of Moses. No parade. No miracles. No halos hovering over the baby’s head. Just a purification ritual and the dedication of a firstborn son (Leviticus 12; Exodus 13). Luke compresses these ceremonies into a few short lines—almost as if to emphasize how unspectacular this moment looked.

But what was happening was anything but ordinary. Peace was entering the world. And Simeon was holding it—literally.

Waiting for the Consolation of Israel

Luke introduces Simeon as “righteous and devout.” A good man. A godly man. But Luke adds something more: Simeon was “waiting for the consolation of Israel.” That phrase echoes the words of the Prophet Isaiah:

“Comfort, comfort my people…
proclaim that her hard service has been completed.”
—Isaiah 40:1–2

For generations, faithful Israelites had prayed for the Messiah—the One who would bring God’s comfort, God’s peace, God’s shalom. Simeon had waited a lifetime. He knew full well that things were not peaceful outside: Rome ruled with force. Taxes were oppressive. Religious leaders were compromised. The road to Jericho was still filled with thieves.
Yet he waited with hope.

This is important: peace for Simeon didn’t come from improved circumstances. Peace came from leaning hard into God’s promise. The Holy Spirit had whispered to him that he would not die before seeing the Messiah. That promise shaped how he lived, how he waited, how he listened.

Peace That Arrives Quietly

Luke 2:27 is easy to overlook, yet it contains one of the biggest “moments” in the Christmas story:

“Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts.”
No angel choir like the shepherds received.
No dreams like Joseph experienced.
No star like the Magi followed.
Just a nudge.
Just a whisper.
But because Simeon obeyed the whisper, he arrived at the exact moment Mary and Joseph walked in. Coincidence? No. Providence? Absolutely. God was at work. God works that way sometimes—moving His servants quietly, purposefully, with precision. But always to just the right place, at just the right time.

Peace You Can Hold

Simeon reached out and took Jesus in his arms—and when he did, everything else faded. He had been waiting for peace, and now peace was resting against his chest. He had been waiting for comfort, and now the Comforter was in his arms, wrapped in a blanket.
He wasn’t told that Rome would collapse, that taxes would ease, or that corruption would end. He wasn’t promised that his nation would suddenly change or that enemies would disappear.

And yet he sang.

Because he held the One who brings peace—and that was enough.

Peace wasn’t something Simeon received.
Peace was someone he embraced.

Peace That Reveals Before It Heals

If you listen carefully, Simeon’s song was not entirely soft or sentimental. He added a minor chord:

“This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many…
so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.”
—Luke 2:34–35

This is the truth modern versions of peace ignore:
peace doesn’t mean avoiding conflict; it means confronting what’s broken.

Jesus, like a surgeon, would wound before He heals.
Christ must expose sin before He forgives it.

True peace is not pretend harmony—it is the restoration of what is shattered.

That’s what shalom means. That is what Simeon was singing about. It is translated “peace,” but it is far richer. In a world that is fragmented, broken, empty, and afraid, shalom is wholeness, harmony, justice, security, flourishing, and rest. Shalom is life as God intended it to be. It arrives when God is present, ordering all things rightly.

The Peace We Still Wait For

Simeon held the Messiah, but he also knew something else: God’s shalom comes in stages. The promise arrives, and then it unfolds. Simeon saw the beginning. We await the completion. We live between promise made and promise fulfilled—just like Simeon did.

Hebrews 11 reminds us that many faithful believers died “not having received the things promised.” They saw the beginnings, trusted the One who promised, and waited.

We inhabit the same space:
Christ has come.
Christ is coming.

We rest in what He has done, and we hope in what He will finish.

Advent Peace

This year will be my seventy-first Christmas. I’ve learned something: sometimes we don’t so much celebrate Christmas as hope we survive it. Peace can seem far away this time of year. There can be lots of reasons for that. Maybe we can’t find shalom because we are carrying burdens Jesus never asked us to carry. Maybe we are trying to control what only God can control. Maybe fear whispers so persistently in our ears that we have forgotten who God is and what God has promised. And our shalom slinks into the shadows.

But we can recover peace by doing what Simeon did:
waiting, listening, and holding onto Jesus.

We don’t find peace in the absence of chaos. We find shalom in the presence of Christ. Peace is trusting the Promise-Maker—
and resting in the Promise-Keeper.

No, that doesn’t mean we will understand everything.
But Advent peace comes when we hold onto, lean into, and rest in the One who does.