The Gospel According to the Women Who Waited - Anna: The Prophet Who Recognized the Light

Some prophets shouted from mountaintops. Anna prayed in the shadows.

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When the Gospel of Luke introduces her, it’s almost as a footnote - a widow, 84 years old, living in the temple, fasting and praying night and day. But that’s exactly where God chose to reveal redemption: not in palaces, not to priests, but to an elderly woman who had been waiting her whole life to see salvation.

Anna’s story is short, just three verses long, but it’s one of the most radical depictions of endurance in all of scripture.

The Prophet in the Temple

“There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day.” (Luke 2:36–37)

Anna lived in the temple for decades. We aren’t told how she survived, who cared for her, or where she slept - only that she stayed.

She didn’t abandon her post. She didn’t turn bitter. She didn’t let obscurity extinguish her faith. She waited.

And when Mary and Joseph walked in carrying baby Jesus, she didn’t see poverty, scandal, or weakness. She saw what everyone else missed: the beginning of liberation.

“At that moment she came and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.” (Luke 2:38)

While others saw a peasant family, Anna saw the future.

Faith That Refuses to Fade

Anna’s story is a reminder that prophecy isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s quiet, persistent, embodied.

She didn’t predict wars or call down fire. She just kept showing up - fasting, praying, keeping vigil when the world had stopped paying attention.

That kind of faith doesn’t look glamorous. It looks like unpaid labor. It looks like community care. It looks like the invisible women who hold movements together, whose prayers and persistence make room for new generations to walk free.

Anna teaches us that the prophetic isn’t about noise. It’s about presence.

The Radical Act of Staying

Anna’s entire ministry was the act of staying. She stayed after loss, after loneliness, after society forgot her name.

And it’s that same act - staying - that sustains justice movements today.

There are Annas in every generation:

• The women who stay after the protest ends to clean up, debrief, and feed people.

• The volunteers who show up to jail visits and court hearings week after week.

• The elders who keep the hotline running, who know the cost of persistence but choose it anyway.

Waiting isn’t passive. It’s endurance with purpose.

Modern Reflections: Prophets in Plain Clothes

Anna is the prophet in a world that undervalues quiet women.She’s the elder who believes even when no one’s listening.She’s the incarcerated grandmother who prays every night for the daughter she hasn’t seen in years.She’s the organizer who never gets credit but holds the movement’s heart together.

Anna teaches us that faith doesn’t have an expiration date. You can be eighty-four and still see the future before anyone else does.

Reclaiming Anna

Anna’s story lasts only three verses, but it captures an entire theology of waiting. In a faith tradition that so often centers youth, power, and visibility, Anna shows us that the Spirit is drawn to endurance, not glamour.

She was old, overlooked, and steadfast - and because she stayed, she recognized the

Light the moment it appeared.

Advent from the Margins

Advent isn’t just about waiting for something new to arrive - it’s about learning to see holiness where the world sees nothing.

Anna saw. She noticed. She testified.

May we all learn to wait with that kind of vision - not passive, but prophetic.

Because sometimes the holiest work is simply staying long enough to see the dawn.

✍️ This post is part of SWOP Behind Bars’ December series, “Women Who Waited – Advent from the Margins,” reimagining sacred waiting as endurance, survival, and resistance.