Grace Notes 2024-11-13

When a loved one travels abroad for any extended period time we long for their return. In our day with instant communications and the reliability of flight schedules we can anticipate the day and even the hour of their return. We can receive notifications about any delays. And yet, given all that, we still drive to the cell phone parking lot and anxiously gaze at the skies to await our loved one’s appearance.

When a loved one travels abroad for any extended period time we long for their return. In our day with instant communications and the reliability of flight schedules we can anticipate the day and even the hour of their return. We can receive notifications about any delays. And yet, given all that, we still drive to the cell phone parking lot and anxiously gaze at the skies to await our loved one’s appearance.

Things should be no different when it comes to Jesus’ return. Of this return our Lord Himself told us that only God knows the day or the hour. As it happens, we do not even know the month, year, century, or millennium of His arrival! But that has not hindered many generations of the devout longing and looking for Christ’s coming.

Do you and I long for His return? I know that He has promised to be with us until the end of the age. But we should also know that we do not now fully see what will be when we look upon His face. Then, John tells us in his first epistle we shall be like Him, and we will finally be perfected in the Faith. So we can legitimately speak both of Christ’s abiding presence, and of His absence as we await His return.

And yet again, I ask you. Do you watch for, and eagerly hope for Christ’s appearing? I hope we have not lost sight of His promise to come for His own and take us to be with Him. Have we become distracted and enamored by the hopes and aspirations of this age? It can be all the more tempting in the modern age with advanced technology, medicine, creature comforts, and entertainment.

We might also ask. Have I grown in my appreciation and fondness of Jesus? Have I spent time listening to Him? Have I appreciated the depths of His love He has showered on me with His mercy? It is with loved ones that we long for their return!

Since You Asked…

Why is the Triune Name of God repeated so frequently in our worship services?

The mystery of the Trinity is one of the most distinctive elements of our Christian Tradition. Christianity is not alone in claiming to be monotheistic (belief in one Supreme Being, one god). But Christianity holds that this One, True God has revealed himself to us as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Scripture teaches that God the Father has revealed himself through God the Son and in God the Spirit. Only the Son can be seen, and only through the Spirit are we enabled to believe in the Father and the Son. And so we often invoke the name of the Triune God in the mystery of our faith.