Simeon at Morrisons

Simeon had waited so long

his bones had learnt winter.

Dust in the folds of his cloak,

incense caught in his beard,

Rome at the gate,

taxes like teeth,

the poor bent double

under empire.

Still he came.

Morning after morning

to the place where promise thinned the air,

where stone and heaven

almost touched.

Waiting

for the consolation of Israel,

for a God who would tear the sky open

and come down.

Not comfort as the world sells it.

Not the soft lie

that tells the bruised to move on.

But consolation

with a face.

A child.

Fragile.

Breathing against his chest.

Warmth in old hands.

God close enough

to hold.

Hope not as idea

but weight.

Waiting over.

Now

he can go in peace.

And Anna—

old as grief,

old as exile,

old as songs

sung before the city fell—

kept watch.

Prayer in her mouth

like broken glass and honey.

She knew the city’s wounds by heart.

The widow selling her ring for bread.

The child learning hunger

before language.

Streets bowed

under the boot.

Still she spoke

of redemption.

Not escape.

Release.

Debts lifted.

Chains slackened.

The city raised

from its knees.

Then later—

after the shouting,

after the kiss,

after wood and nails,

after noon turned black—

Joseph waited too.

For the kingdom.

And the kingdom

looked like absence.

A body lowered.

A stone dragged shut.

Promise in the ground.

This is the ache of faith:

spoken

but not seen.

And still we wait.

Outside Morrisons

the queue forms early.

Carrier bags.

Damp sleeves.

Breath in the cold.

A mother counting coins

like numbers might turn.

A man in recovery

holding the day together

hour by hour.

A child in a hotel room

watching rain

he doesn’t name as home.

The ground itself feels it—

water at the door,

smoke in the lungs of cities,

children with cobalt in their hands

while our screens glow in the dark.

Anna keeps watch still.

Not in the temple now

but in corridors,

waiting rooms,

estate stairwells,

under umbrellas at gravesides.

Still whispering

redemption.

And the Messiah—

not tame, not distant—

moves in it.

At the edge of the queue.

By the hospital bed.

In the quiet

after the car has gone.

The Spirit hovers

over the mess—

over floodwater and ash,

over streets split open,

over what looks finished.

And deeper than all of it,

beneath the noise,

beneath the hard crust of things,

love holds.

Steady as breathing.

Holding the waiting.

Holding the grief.

Holding the world

toward the day

when consolation is seen,

when redemption has a voice,

when the kingdom comes

like morning.

So we live here—

between promise and fulfilment,

between resserection and return

between the foodbank queue

and the wedding feast.

We name what is broken.

We lean toward what will be.

The child Simeon held

is alive.

The stone did not keep him.

Death did not keep him.

And so even here,

outside Morrisons,

in the rain,

among carrier bags

and tired faces,

the kingdom is breathing.

And still

it comes.

-Rev’d Jon Swales,

Rome, 2026

Artwork James B. Janknegt, 'The Presentation of Jesus