The world-wide waiting

Listen!

I am standing at the door, knocking. Revelation 3:20

 

Read Luke 12:35—40

On New Year’s Eve I am not the only one waiting. They wait in Sydney. They wait in Paris. They wait in Greenwich. They wait in Tokyo. In Times Square. They count down the seconds. And the seconds are the same length, and the ten-nine-eight-seven-six take just as long as ever they did. Each New Year rolls over at exactly the same rate, so it works by feeling inevitable. It would be quite spoilt if there were ever a surprise — but they love it! We love to have something coming, something to wait for, even if it is utterly predictable. And to say goodbye to what’s past. To be done with it. My hope this night is that I may have some of this world-wide excitement, and direct it with a more exciting, a much more rewarding alertness, that I be waiting for the one I can’t control, whose coming is not predictable, whose timing is not inevitable, that I be sharp, awake for the one whose coming will bring the renewal of all things.

 

Lord, God of eternity, God of all time, the days and the weeks, of the seasons and the years, who measures my life-span, you have called me to live in the promise of the one who is coming. And though I have seen him by faith, and though I know him by faith, I follow him especially by promise. Jesus opens the future. He fills it. He is coming still in the future. So I am not trapped in the past. For this past year I can now thank you, especially for every way I have tasted your loving kindness. For everything I regret, I thank you that Jesus has presented himself as my Saviour, and has taken full responsibility for me and for all my failings. Open the door to the coming year. May it be a year for meeting you. Let me live alert to your coming in every day of it.