Birds singing!  How?  How can they possibly dare to spread joy today?  Oh, I just want to scream – to strike out at someone or something!  Yet, all about me are flowers growing, and trees blooming, and birds singing.  Children are playing in the bushes while we adults just stand here so still and gloom-filled.

It is as if life refuses to stand still even a moment – as if one death is incapable of ruining a joy-filled day.  I want to feel sad – I have a right to sorrow.  Oh, why must that blasted bird sing of such cheer?  Our black gowns and scarves look utterly absurd in this garden of fragrant colors and God-sent music.  Women are burying their faces in black handkerchiefs.  Men with heads bowed low – wiping tears away. NO MORE!

Anna would be furious if she could see this darkened display on such a glorious spring day.

“No more – no more!” – I shout aloud as I flee with skirts held up – running, running.  From death, I flee to the Temple to find life.  There, at the open window – I know that I will find life – the joy and peace that Anna would have awaiting me.  

Through the narrow streets, I flee as a person pursued by danger.  Safety – I know I have safety in the Temple’s courtyards and rooms to pray.

For years, I found my solace there.

The window – if only I could reach the window.

The town is oddly still this day – shops are closed in the honor of the prophetess – Anna. All her days she was scorned and mocked, yet at her death they remembered her righteousness, goodness, and mercy she had extended to each family.  Time has seemed to stop in honor of this great lady of faith.  My heart seemed to quit beating when I felt hers stop within my very own arms of love for her.  

Not now – I must not remember – just get to the window.

Within the Temple, I had a strange feeling – as if I was not alone.  Surely, it was just because of the funeral and the confusion of this day.  So many times over the years, I walked boldly into the Temple to this inner room – where the prophetess stayed.   Today - there was such a powerful reverence pounding within my heart.  I saw no a person around me, yet, I felt as if I was before God Almighty Himself.  As I entered Anna’s sitting room – I gasped as an odd terror ripped through me.  Running to the giant windows – I tugged at them wildly – not even noticing the latch was secured.  I had to get them open.  Even the heavy crimson draperies were drawn.  Those I yanked back in my frenzy as if they were light as lace.  Yet, in my crazed urgency, I clawed helplessly at the secured windows – all in vain.

With a start, I turned as a stranger’s hand had come to rest gently upon my shoulder.

A voice so tender and oddly warm – this stranger to me – by His robes I saw he was the high priest.  Slowly, as if in deep thought, this High Priest covered my hand on the window.  Together, with his tremendous strength added to my feeble attempt – we opened the great windows as Anna always kept them.

Immediately I fell to my knees at her window seat with my face buried in the robes of this great High Priest – so mighty in honor –yet, at this moment, an intimate friend of comfort to me in my grief. 

For years, I would slip into the Temple to this very spot and kneel before the great prophetess, Anna, as she sat upon her eat by the great open window.  The breeze was always refreshing to me even as now on this horrid blackened day of pain for me.  The birds would always sing angelic songs on the stormiest of days.  Their melodies this moment seem to force the gloom away – like winds blowing clouds as dust from before the sun – so glorious.

For years – I knelt with my head upon the lap of the prophetess – my dearest friend.  Now, I rest my sobbing face in the robes of this stranger –the highest of the priests – yet, to my young heart – a brand – new friend – a comfort. Slowly, gracefully, his hand slips beneath my chin.  He scoops my face between two warm hands so full of love.  One by one – he wipes away my tears with his very own fingers – yet, deeper in my heart – somehow he wipes away the pain of my sorrow.  At his featherweight touch, my pain is turned to joy.

Instead of sobbing I arise and dance with a joy, as I have never known before.  “No! No!” – I shout.  “This is not a day of defeat – this is a day of victory. My Anna lived her entire life with one hope, one desire, and one dream – to see the Messiah come.  She beheld His glory in the form of a tiny infant.  Then, she told me
with such happiness that she could go home and rest now for it was complete.”  I did not understand then, but at the touch of this High Priest’s hand I knew – I knew – Anna, somehow was not dead as the stones of the field without life.  No, my Anna somehow had found the ultimate victory – a life beyond the grave.  With one look into Messiah’s eyes, her life had been changed – a new life – even in her aged days of service.

Now she is not here.

Her body – a mere clay form – lies upon the hill surrounded by people adorned in black robes depicting death. Yet, God sent flowers and birds to announce to us all – she is alive!  She is alive!  We cannot see her for she has gone away to another place – heaven.   I know she lives.

Finally, my dancing stops – my shouts and cries of joy cease.  I stand before this High Priest sitting upon Anna’s seat at the open window.  

Is it the glow of the sun shimmering through the forest to rest upon his face?

No – something greater is happening.

I cannot stand – I fall at his knees again – sobbing.  This time I cry not at Anna’s death – somehow I feel as if I – I, myself – am having a death within me.

Oh, words – words – help me, oh God to voice my heart.

In an instant, as I knelt before the High Priest – I felt as if this Sara – me – who had lived these short 16 years was whisked away like Anna in her death.  I suddenly felt new – feel so different.  Yet, no – not a feeling.  This – this was so transforming. Like the dough becoming bread – it is still the same yet altogether  different.  Like water becoming ice.

Again, so slowly, so tenderly he lifted my face to look straight into his.   My eyes could barely see past the flaming glory that shown so brightly in this room.  Then, without a word – I saw his eyes – I gasped as if a bolt of lightening had stricken me.  I had seen those eyes only once before.  

In this very Temple when my closest childhood friends – Mary and Joseph had brought the baby – Jesus – for His time of sacred blessings.  As Simeon had held his tiny form – the baby turned and looked at me.  At the very moment that Simeon shouted forth that in his arms was the Messiah that he had waited for – the baby caught my eyes as this stranger – the High Priest now stares into my heart, and speaks – 

                                                                “ONLY BELIEVE! “

I crumble to the floor unable to move – the power of his words – his face – his eyes.  I am not dead – but my body cannot stand before him.
 
 

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