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Waiting on Jesus

 

Waiting can be challenging when it involves other people, events, or programs. Does it sometimes seem like an eternity when we must patiently wait for something to arrive, start or end? We wait for someone to return from an errand, for the service to start, for the class to end, and perhaps for your pizza to arrive hot and on time.

Waiting can be tolerable if we know, from experience, that everything normally works out in the end. The UPS truck eventually brings the delivery, the curtain opens and the movie starts, the class lecture finally ends, and our pizza arrives before we starve to death.

However, there is a waiting process that really doesn’t involve literal waiting around. It involves us living our lives actively engaged, hopeful and watchful that what we are waiting for is already underway and could come at any moment. We are talking about the second advent of Jesus Christ.

Many of us are familiar with the first advent when Jesus entered the world in the flesh as a newborn baby. He arrived as the Christ-child. The Messiah. The Savior. As we read in John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” This event was foretold. The world waited. He arrived. All was fulfilled.

Advent. The season is more than just about the Christmas story or the beginning of the Church liturgical year. The word is Latin (Adventus) and means “coming” or “arrival.” This same Latin word is also translated into the Greek with the word “Parousia” that Paul uses in 1 Thessalonians 2:19. The point is clear: Jesus is coming back again.

As we anticipate the return of Christ and find ourselves “waiting on Jesus” to come back, I believe there is one important lesson to learn about this “second advent.” The lesson is from the Apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:2 when he warns us that “…the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”

The astonishing thing to note is that this verse is written in “present tense” meaning it can be translated “The day of the Lord is coming like a thief…” Paul, writing in “present tense,” doesn’t mean that the return of Jesus is this one-time event that will eventually happen “way out there” in the distant future. By no means!

Paul is literally saying that the events surrounding the return of Jesus are already under way. The process has already started. The plan is underway. That is why we need to be not only waiting, but watching….not only watching, but staying alert and spiritually awake. Since this event is “already under way” it could literally happen today….perhaps even before we are finished reading this article!

I think, perhaps, it would be in our best interest to stop thinking of the second advent as nothing more than a long period of time where we are “waiting on Jesus” to come back hundreds of years from now. As if we should just “go back to what we were doing” because Jesus probably won’t return in our lifetime.

Rather, with joy and excitement, we can change our attitudes and hearts to live our lives like we are expecting Jesus “any moment now!” If we take that perspective, we may find that we live with greater urgency and a higher state of readiness, anticipation, and eagerness that it could be right now!

 Are you ready…awake…watching for the fulfillment of 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.”

I am no longer just “waiting” on Jesus to return. I’m doing something about it. I’m living like I am expecting Him anytime now! How about you? You may not be waiting much longer! I think Gabriel may be starting to warm up his trumpet!

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