In This Issue:
About Shane Bennett
Shane has been loving Muslims and connecting people who love Jesus with Muslims for more than 20 years. He speaks like he writes – in a practical, humorous, and easy-to-relate-to way – about God’s passion to bring all peoples into his kingdom.
Life includes a whole lot of waiting. We wait for the first snow, and then we wait for spring. We wait for someone to reply to our email, respond to our text, answer our question, or return our gaze. We wait for the baby to be born, roll over, say a word, take a step, tie its shoes, go to school, learn to drive, graduate, get married, and give us grandkids so we can watch the whole agonizingly beautiful process all over again. We wait for the doctor’s report. We wait for that breath that will be our last.
We also wait for a progress report, report card, yellow card, yellow light, and for the people with 13 items in the ten-item checkout lane who are paying with a check. I don’t know about you, but I wait for stuff to arrive from Amazon and say, “OK, Bezos, where are the delivery drones you promised?” I wait for people to take their turn in Words with Friends, for Mumford and Sons to release another album, and for 99% Invisible to drop in my podcast queue.
Those of us who love Jesus wait for his return and for the fullness of his kingdom on earth. We wait for God to keep his “blessing all families” promise to Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 12:3 and to answer the prayer Jesus prayed in Matthew 6:10 that his Father’s will would be done and his kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven. We wait for the fulfillment of the promise of Matthew 24:14, where Jesus says the gospel of the kingdom will be preached among all peoples as a witness to all nations before the end comes.
Do you, like me, sometimes get tired of waiting for the kingdom? Even though Jesus launched his ministry by saying, “Repent, believe, for the kingdom of Heaven is here,” if you look around, you see lots of non-kingdom stuff going on. Sometimes I need look no farther than my own heart. Other effects are more distant, but no less gut-wrenching, as when kingdom workers in Kabul perish in the midst of their work and others in Aden are killed after months of captivity.
I hear Peter’s words in my head: “They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation’” (2 Peter 3:3-4).
Can I say to you (while I’m saying it to me): Don’t give up waiting for his kingdom. Even as we look forward to celebrating the birth of Jesus, may God renew our faith and hope for the fullness of the kingdom which the babe was born to bring. Stay strong, the kingdom will come. God’s purposes will not be thwarted.
We have a couple of dogs, and we let them live in the house. That makes “going outside” just about the most amazing experience they can imagine. When someone opens a door, pretty much any door in the house, the dogs are instantly there. Since they’re not allowed to go out before the humans do, they’re given one of two commands: “Wait” means hang on until I get through the door, and then you can leap into your joy. “Stay,” on the other hand, means you don’t get to go outside this time. I imagine something like this goes through their little canine brains: “Oh man, we can’t go outside. Now all we can do is lie here and wait for him to come back. Our main challenge is to try to keep from eating out of the trash can.”
Our waiting is more like the first command: an anticipation of joy. In his book With Open Hands, Henri Nouwen describes the work we have while waiting:
“You are Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in, so long as you emphasize the need of conversion both for yourself and for the world, so long as you in no way let yourself become established in the situation of the world, so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come. You are Christian only when you believe you have a role to play in the realization of the new kingdom, and when you urge everyone you meet with holy unrest to make haste so that the promise might soon be fulfilled. So long as you live as a Christian you keep looking for a new order, a new structure, a new life.”
Wait well, my friends. Ask for the kingdom. Battle apathy and despair. Ardently follow your kingdom passion. Love your enemies.
Enjoy Christmas for all you’re worth. And from time to time, pause to gaze at the wee babe in the nativity scene and remind yourself, “My, but that boy is going to change the world.”
Did you miss any of our 2014 Practical Mobilization articles? Check them out through the links below or browse all the Missions Catalyst archives.
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