Round with excitement, swollen with joy

My sister told me that this little guy



said to her the other day:

Did you know that Jesus is coming back?

And that made me think about when I first knew or realized or was told that Jesus is coming back. I don't remember when I found out...it just feels like I've always known.

I wish I could recall when I learned this news. Or maybe, as an adult, being told for the first time that Jesus will return for His Bride...the amazement, the joy, the excitement.

It's unbelievable truth. It's hope.

And I rarely think about it. I don't live in that reality.

Jesus is coming back.

And that is good news. But not because of the rescue or the relief it promises. The good news is that when He returns, we'll be with Him.

It may not be in my life-time, but He's coming again and it is great news.

And, it feels far away. He promised His return 2,000 years ago. Over those millennia the signs He told us to look for have been read and hundreds of men and women have promised that on a certain date or at a certain time, Jesus would be back. And He hasn't come back.

Yet.

So within all the hundreds of years of waiting and the decades and decades of history, we find ourselves.

Trusting in that return.

The other day I had to have an echo(ultrasound) of our baby's heart. Statistically speaking, because of my age, there are certain birth defects that can be detected through ultrasounds or blood tests...or an amnio. Because of the invasiveness of an amnio, we didn't do that test. And so, all these other tests.

I lay on the bed, while the ultrasound tech used her camera and pressed hard on my swollen belly, and craned my neck to see the four beating chambers of a pea-sized heart. Our room was mostly quiet, as the tech couldn't tell me anything about what she saw. And as she finished, she said that a doctor would review the ultrasound and then be in touch with my doctor withing two weeks. Good-bye.

That was it.

Walking into that room, I was mostly confident that everything was fine with our baby. I still am confident that everything is fine. But not hearing anything that day rattled me. I hadn't expected to have to wait.

Jesus is coming back. Did we expect to have to wait so long?

And while I craned my neck to see a beating heart and stretched my patience in the wait, I heard these words: I am with you always.

That Jesus is coming back gives us hope, it strengthens our faith, causes us to grow round with excitement, swollen with joy.

Here's some news that may just be as good: He is always with us.

As we anticipate and wait and hope and struggle and live, we aren't alone.

He is always with us.

When the anticipation is long. When the signs we read don't equal the return we thought would happen. When the struggle hardly seems worth the promise of a long-time gone Savior.

He is always with us.

Like His return, it's something I've always known. Remembering that He is with me, with us, it's the Bride waiting for her wedding day, the mama waiting for her baby to be born.

I am round with excitment, swollen with joy.