Anticipation

Today we are invited to live in the joy and strength of anticipation – focusing on things on earth around us through the lens of things eternal.  It’s not an escapist view but rather a view that really puts things in proper perspective. 

Most troubles do not last forever.  God has a solution that will give us joy and strength for the journey today and peace and blessing with Him forever in eternity.

Hundreds of years before Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem as the Saviour of the world, God sent a message about the promised Messiah through the prophet Isaiah that people held onto generation after generation.  You’ve probably heard these familiar words:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 

Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. Isaiah 9:6-7

Thank You, Loving God, that Jesus did come at just the time God planned. He did live to show us Your deep love for us.  He did die in our place to pay the unpayable debt that our sins had racked up.  And he gave us this wonderful hope to keep in mind as we go through life, each with our own challenges and troubles:

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.  1 John 3:2

Lord, we find ourselves today in this in between place between all that You accomplished for us by coming to earth and dying for us, rising again to new life, and ascending into heaven to prepare a place for us and yet not yet having returned to take us to that wonderful place You are preparing for us. 

Teach us how to look at today and this season from the perspective of eternity.  We pray today to have the correct response to the waiting we are doing until You come again and make everything new.  Help us to live in faith that You are working out Your purposes in just the right way and You will fulfill them at just the right time.  Amen

Whatever the next days and weeks have in store for us individually or as a culture, let’s keep praying to have God’s view of it all.