The waiting is nearly over, the day is almost here, and after just one more sleep we will all wake up on Christmas morning, when the rejoicing can begin in earnest.
Christmas, they say, is the most wonderful time of the year – and for many it is. But for a great many others it isn’t – not when so many continue to hurt, and be hurt, in far too many ways.
There is then a tension between all that we already have, and all that we continue to long for – all that gives us cause to celebrate, and all that makes us mourn. And it’s a tension that is also there in the biblical account of the Christmas story. For whilst our hearts rejoice at the birth of Jesus, we cannot ignore the abject poverty into which He was born, the rejection experienced by His parents, or the murder of the innocents at the tyrannical hands of King Herod.
But just as Jesus’ birth brought hope back then, so it remains today – even for those who find themselves in the most difficult of circumstances. Because Advent is not just a time of looking back that culminates in celebrating Christ’s first coming – it is also a time of looking forward, in hope-filled anticipation of His second coming too.
And when that day finally does come, as it surely will, all that is currently wrong with the world is going to be made right. And what’s more, it will remain so forever. [Isaiah 9:7]
For on that day, heaven will be here on earth. All our tears will be wiped from our eyes, and death shall be no more. And neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore – for all those former things will have passed away. [Revelation 21:1-4]
All this has been promised to us by God himself. And because His promise is so certain, we can be absolutely sure that, one day, it really will come about. That’s not to say that this sure and certain hope of a better tomorrow takes away all our sadness today – because it doesn’t – but it does sustain us while the very difficult days keep on coming.
So make no mistake, for the time being at least, hard times will continue – and maybe all the more so. But the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us [Romans 8:18] – they are both light and momentary when compared to the eternal weight of glory which they themselves are preparing for us. [2 Corinthians 4:17]
And bitter though they may be, we can nonetheless rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because through it, paradoxically, we come to know the love of God for us, even as we come to love Him too. [Romans 5:3-5]
And so we wait for the day when Emmanuel, the God who is with us now, will be with us in a way we have never experienced before – the day He dwells with us as our God, even as we dwell with Him as His people. [Revelation 21:3]
Nobody knows when that will be, other than God the Father himself. But we do know that we are currently living in the last days, a period that began when Jesus ascended, not only to heaven, but to a throne – the one from which He currently reigns. All of which means that the next great event in God’s redemptive plan is Christ’s triumphant return on the day when the whole of creation will be restored.
So the waiting is nearly over, the day is almost here, and when our time does come to die, we can look forward to going into the immediate presence of the Lord. Moreover, we can be confident that our death will be nothing more than a final sleep from which we will wake up on the greatest morning of them all.
And what a day that will be – one when, untinged by sadness, the rejoicing will begin in earnest.
And will never, ever end. [Isaiah 65:18]
To read Day 24, from 2023
To read Day 24, from 2024
Some musings 