When Something Is About to Happen

Meditations for the Season of Advent 

November 29, 2022

When Something Is About to Happen

I say to you what I say to everyone: Watch!”

Mark 13: 37       

"I'll tell you what keeps me coming to this church." The man who spoke was punching the air with his finger, pronouncing every word with force and the dozen or so other people in the room turned to listen. "It's strange, I know, but I get the feeling here, like nowhere else, that something is about to happen."

The feeling that something is about to happen. The earliest Christians would have recognized this instantly as one of the truest marks of the church. They were convinced they stood on the edge of history, and that something was about to happen. For the world, time just moved on, but for the early Christian community, something was about to happen.

Because something was about to happen, every word they uttered, every deed they did, every prayer they prayed was shaped by faith in the coming of Christ. Today, those who trust in the promise of God's coming kingdom are also able to see advance signs of its coming all around them.

Every time Christians recite the creed, "He will come to judge the quick and the dead," we proclaim our hope that frail human justice, the kind one can get with a good lawyer and a full checkbook, is not the justice for which we yearn. Every time we share clothing or food for those in need, we do so not because we are so naive as to think that a few used garments and a shelf of soup and cereal are going to end human need. We do so because we live today in the light of God's tomorrow, when all will be clothed in garments of light and the banquet table of the kingdom will hold a feast. Every time we speak words of forgiveness in circumstances of bitterness, words of love in situations of hatred, we are using, in the present, a language which the whole creation will learn to speak in God's tomorrow.

My Takeaway: I am in a place where every time I kneel at the altar of our church to receive the Eucharist, I get the feeling that something is about to happen within me. I hope you have similar experiences where you worship.

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

 

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com.

 

Copyright © 2022 by Alex M. Knight

 

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.