Is there an end in sight? Perhaps. But we know there is danger in being too optimistic and so we hedge our bets, trying to play the long game a little while longer.
In his second and final letter to scattered Christians and churches, the apostle Peter is writing to make sure they will be able to remember, after his death, the very great and precious promises they have been given through the glory and goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ. In an unstable and hazardous world, they can know a genuine security in their Saviour.
Essential to their endurance is "looking forward to the day of God" (3:12). There is, genuinely, an end in sight. It cannot be timetabled but it is certain. A day when all that is broken will be restored, when the new heavens and earth will be unveiled in stunning beauty and righteousness. Everything will be laid bare in a judgement that brings final healing.
Along with Peter's first readers we are waiting for that day. A waiting that is often experienced as longing with the heaviest of hearts. A waiting that can also be an on-tiptoes eagerness, having seen and tasted now something of the beauty and wonder of the God who is good. A waiting that is sustained in hope by the Spirit of Jesus. Waiting for the one "whom having not seen, [we] love."
Often, waiting in this life means hanging on, passive and inactive, until you get the golden ticket through the post. This is different. Peter's encouragement is to live holy and godly lives as we long for that day - patient but not passive, living now in the light of what will be then. Embracing and embodying a truly living hope. Words, deeds, motives and desires being re-shaped into God-likeness, suffused with a joy that is both latent and patent.
And Peter augments the portrait he is sketching, adding in a final flourish that waiting for the day of God "speeds its coming". It hastens it, brings it nearer. It cannot make it more certain - that is guaranteed and sealed by the promise of the God who cannot lie - but it can somehow, mysteriously, bring it nearer.
Does he mean nearer in our perception but not in actuality? We know that longing often has the opposite effect - the holiday we're desperate for still seems an age away! No, however hard it is to rationalise what Peter is saying, his meaning is clear: our longing, birthed by the Spirit, is taken-up into the sovereign plans of God. Our eager, sometimes desperate desire to see Jesus, to see his world restored and all sin and evil removed, is not in vain and isn't beside the point. He has chosen to make it part of the resolution.
Into the dreariness and struggles of life comes a call to keep looking ahead, to keep pressing onward and upward, to not throw away the confidence that will be richly rewarded (Heb. 10:35). The time is coming when we see the King in all his beauty, the veil of time having been rent and our eyes opened to unbleached glory.
In his second and final letter to scattered Christians and churches, the apostle Peter is writing to make sure they will be able to remember, after his death, the very great and precious promises they have been given through the glory and goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ. In an unstable and hazardous world, they can know a genuine security in their Saviour.
Essential to their endurance is "looking forward to the day of God" (3:12). There is, genuinely, an end in sight. It cannot be timetabled but it is certain. A day when all that is broken will be restored, when the new heavens and earth will be unveiled in stunning beauty and righteousness. Everything will be laid bare in a judgement that brings final healing.
Along with Peter's first readers we are waiting for that day. A waiting that is often experienced as longing with the heaviest of hearts. A waiting that can also be an on-tiptoes eagerness, having seen and tasted now something of the beauty and wonder of the God who is good. A waiting that is sustained in hope by the Spirit of Jesus. Waiting for the one "whom having not seen, [we] love."
Often, waiting in this life means hanging on, passive and inactive, until you get the golden ticket through the post. This is different. Peter's encouragement is to live holy and godly lives as we long for that day - patient but not passive, living now in the light of what will be then. Embracing and embodying a truly living hope. Words, deeds, motives and desires being re-shaped into God-likeness, suffused with a joy that is both latent and patent.
And Peter augments the portrait he is sketching, adding in a final flourish that waiting for the day of God "speeds its coming". It hastens it, brings it nearer. It cannot make it more certain - that is guaranteed and sealed by the promise of the God who cannot lie - but it can somehow, mysteriously, bring it nearer.
Does he mean nearer in our perception but not in actuality? We know that longing often has the opposite effect - the holiday we're desperate for still seems an age away! No, however hard it is to rationalise what Peter is saying, his meaning is clear: our longing, birthed by the Spirit, is taken-up into the sovereign plans of God. Our eager, sometimes desperate desire to see Jesus, to see his world restored and all sin and evil removed, is not in vain and isn't beside the point. He has chosen to make it part of the resolution.
Into the dreariness and struggles of life comes a call to keep looking ahead, to keep pressing onward and upward, to not throw away the confidence that will be richly rewarded (Heb. 10:35). The time is coming when we see the King in all his beauty, the veil of time having been rent and our eyes opened to unbleached glory.
***********
Come, Lord, and tarry not;
Bring the long-looked-for day;
O why these years of waiting here,
These ages of delay?
Come, for Thy saints still wait;
Daily ascends their sigh;
The Spirit and the bride say, Come;
Wilt Thou not hear the cry?
Come in Thy glorious might,
Come with the iron rod;
Scattering Thy foes before Thy face,
Most mighty Son of god.
Come, and make all things new;
Build up this ruined earth;
Restore our faded paradise,
Creation's second birth.
Come, and begin Thy reign
Of everlasting peace;
Come, take the kingdom to Thyself,
Great King of Righteousness!
(Horatius Bonar, 1808-89)
