By Chaplain (Col) Stephen W. Leonard, USA, Ret.
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Galatians 4:4-5
Of all the religions in the world, none, except one, waited for its founder to be revealed after tens of thousands of years of waiting based on continuous prophecies through the years that He would surely come in the fullness of time. Jesus was first prophesied in the distant past of the very first humans, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden.
Genesis 3:15 first prophesied a Redeemer that would defeat His enemy, Satan. And then many prophets over thousands of years, precisely and continuously, promised that He would come and be born in obscure, little Bethlehem of Judea at the dawn of the Common Era. This is true of no other founder, no other religion, but Christianity.
From the Garden of Eden to the manger were many millenniums of waiting. Advent, that is, coming, is a time of learning to WAIT with eager expectation and hope, just as we wait today for Jesus’ Return. We look back to the birth of the Savior and forward to the coronation of the King!
We learn from those who waited before for Messiah, Christ, to come to earth, and we now wait eagerly for King Jesus to return, just as He said He would. We never tire of waiting with expectation for our King to come again, in the clouds, with his saints accompanying him. As Revelation 1 says, “Every eye will see Him!”
Just as the Old Testament saints before us waited patiently, as Simeon and Anna, we can learn from them to wait for him to pierce the clouds and stand with his feet on the Mount of Olives. As He said, “I am coming quickly!”
And in eternity, as we look back, we shall see that He indeed came quickly, He was the Judge immediately at the door all along.
So make your waiting, the same as Mary waited 9 months from the annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to the birth of Jesus in a manger, as expectantly, as hopeful, as meaningful, as earnestly, as eager as a mother waiting 9 months for the birth of her precious child. Wait for Jesus in the same manner, knowing His coming is certainly just as sure!
Encouragement
“He came down to earth from heaven, who is God and LORD of all, And His shelter was a stable, and His cradle was a stall, with the poor, and mean, and lowly, lived on earth, our Savior holy.”
(2nd verse of Cecil Francis Alexander’s hymn, “Once In Royal David’s City,” 1848)
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