This week I’ve posted about what it means to ‘wait for the Lord.’ I reminded us (mostly just me) that Jesus is returning, God’s blessing is with the wait-ers–those stuck in the in-between, and God’s future in-breaking should effect how we live in the presence. Our waiting is not passive but an eager watchfulness for signs of the Kingdom. We live into what we anticipate.
I discovered a one of my posts from the beginning of Advent a couple of years ago. As I re-read this post from 2013, I was struck by this paragraph:
To wait is to be dissatisfied, to long for more and kick against the
status quo. This is Advent. It isn’t piously and passively biding time. We wait and we groan for restoration and justice, for reconciliation and wholeness, for peace on earth and good will towards humanity, for a new heaven and a new earth. These things are bound up with the God born in a stable and nailed to a tree. Because of Christ’s coming we were given hope. When he returns all will be restored. This is why we wait.
Here is our choice: we can wait or we can ‘not wait.’ To wait for the Lord is to admit we are in trouble and to long for His salvation. To not wait means to settle for what is or to rely on our own resources to solve our own problems. This could mean reliance on technology, politics, philosophy, spirituality, science, or whatever. Whatever we make so we don’t have to wait.
Revelation, the last book of the Bible, closes with these words, “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen” (Rev. 22:20-21).
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. If we are honest, we have real problems and no good solutions. If ever there was a time we need a savior it is now:
- Racial tensions runs high. Everywhere we look we see ongoing, systemic injustice: Ferguson, Charleston, New York, Baltimore, Chicago and countless places, xenophobic politicians demeaning immigrants and our failure to care for the aliens residing in our land (Lev 19:34). Come Lord Jesus.
- We have had a fourteen-year-war-on-terror. Do you feel safer? Al Queda and Isis, radical Islam, attacks on Paris and Europe and attempted attacks, the shooting this week in San Bernadino. Come Lord Jesus.
- There is a global refugee crisis, including the thousands of Syrians displanted and the failure to care for these vulnerable people. Come Lord Jesus.
- We remember those held captive–the unjustly incarcerated, those locked in detention centers the trafficked, the addicts. Come Lord Jesus.
- We have a steady stream of gun violence in schools, churches, health departments and hospitals. Come Lord Jesus!
- The global injustice we don’t hear much about. How cycles of violence lock the world’s poor in their poverty with no one to advocate for them. Come Lord Jesus!
As Christians we are people of hope, dissatisfied with the status quo who hurt with those who are hurting. To not wait, means we simply settle for what is and try to make the best of it. Christian hope drives us to discontent as we eagerly anticipate a kingdom where all injustice, war, victimization, poverty, violence, sorrow and grief will end. For you we wait Lord Christ.
Amen, Come Lord Jesus
thoughts, prayers & songs: 