Jesus will come

that’s what the readerboard said at the beginning of this advent season…

the one in front of the little church down the street…where we met and mourned our little gramma before they laid her to rest these five years ago…

and i just sighed relieved…so thankful to be reminded at just that moment…

Jesus will come!

and not like He did before…

when His suffering and oppressed people…having clung to the promise that He would come…that He would deliver…waited and hoped…and fixed their eyes on the heavens…so sure of a triumphant entry of a warrior to save!

but His plan was infinitely more wonderful…His plan was unimaginable…

into a dark and cold and uninviting world…He came most ordinarily…He came just like us!

them fixing their eyes on the heavens…Him crawling right by under their noses!

Him walking this earth among us…

living this life the way we should live it…dying the death that we should die…

2000 years later and this world is no less broken…still so filled to overflowing with suffering…

that herod storming in just days ago and stealing all those precious babies away from their mamas…

this world so aches…our hearts so ache…

but Jesus will come!

and we can set our eyes on the heavens…we know how He will come!

we’ve been assured…

“for the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God.  and the dead in Christ will rise first.  then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.”

“He who testifies to these things says, ‘surely I am coming soon.'”

so during this advent season…we’ve remembered their waiting…

and we wait…

and in His always perfect timing…Jesus will come!

– 1 thessalonians 4:16-17 and revelation 22:20