I have a particular memory from my childhood that comes back to me often. I’m in late-afternoon football practice as a kid in Alabama. No waistband Velcro flags for us. We may have been in elementary school, but this was full contact in helmets and shoulder pads.
About halfway through the drills and scrimmages in the crisp late autumn weather, I would see him.
My dad.
He’d stop at our practice field on his way home from work to watch our progress. One moment the sidelines were empty and then the next moment I’d get up from a tackle to notice he was there.
It’s been over fifty years, but I can still remember the little thrill that welled up in me to find he had arrived. He’d be standing there with his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, almost a silhouette in the twilight.
I never knew when it would happen, so I ran every drill and executed every play knowing that he might show up in the middle of it.
Jesus wanted us to live every day anticipating his arrival. After forty days with his disciples following his resurrection, Jesus ascended before their eyes. Their astonished silence was broken by the words of two angels. “Why do you stand here looking into the sky?” the angels asked. “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11).
The disciples’ approach to life changed because of this promise. The thought of Christ’s return motivated the first Christians to make the right moral choices, to be patient, and to keep their faith during persecution. The Apostle Paul even summarized the Christian life as simply “to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven” (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10).
Whether you play football or lead some great moral cause or do another pile of the kids’ laundry, one day it will happen. You’ll look up and see that he’s arrived.
Jesus.
Live in such a way that he will be pleased with you when he shows up.
--Tom
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