The tribe of Asher hit the jackpot in the land they were portioned in Canaan. The soil was so rich it could happily provide “delicacies fit for a king,” just as Jacob had predicted for Asher in Genesis 49:20.
But the most famous Asherite in the Bible wasn’t rich. As a frail old lady Anna the Asherite had nothing to offer a king. She did have a king in mind, however, in how she spent her time each day, and many nights too. As a “prophetess” (Luke 2:36), it was her job to continue speaking about and confirming what “God said through his holy prophets of long ago,” Luke 1:70, that God would fulfill “the oath he swore to our father Abraham, to rescue us from the hand of our enemies” (73-74) through a person from “the royal house of his servant David” (69).
She was in the temple every day, then, to make her life fit for such a king, despite the fact that year after dreary year under the thumb of Roman rule there was no sign at all that the king whom God had promised was coming to save them. But that didn’t stop Anna offering the delicacies she knew her king would relish.
And in the culture of her day what she offered was truly exotic, because the reason her fellow Israelites were in such a bind was their inability to see and fit in with God’s plan for the world through them (Isaiah 49:6) – and through a very special member of their clan from the house of David too. But Anna the Asherite had cottoned on, so she prayed and fasted to keep her faith in God and his saving plan alive.
And to God these were delicacies fit for a king, because this little old lady of all people was doing what so few of her fellow Israelites were doing – struggling day and night to keep her belief alive in a world where there was no evidence that God was either saving them as a nation or saving the whole world.
And the great blessing she received for that was knowing when Joseph and Mary arrived in the temple carrying the eight day old Jesus, that the king she’d been making her life fit for had arrived. And in return for gearing her life to what her king would relish, she was given what she would most relish, the richest delicacy of all, actually seeing the King and Saviour of the world face to face. So was that just meant for her, or is “Seeing the face of Jesus” the same blessing for keeping our faith alive too?….(next blog)
