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The Second Advent
Betsy Childs

Advent is a strange season, strange because it invites us to look forward
to something that has already happened. The word "advent" literally means
"coming." Advent is a time of waiting, waiting for the birth of a child
who was born two thousand years ago.

Is this a flaw in the whole concept of the Advent season? Not at all. In
Advent, we don't simply look back and pretend that we are waiting,
imagining what it would have been like to wait for the Messiah prior to
the Incarnation. We are also meant to truly and sincerely look forward to
Christ's second coming.

I've told this story before, but I think it bears repeating. Some time
ago I was participating in a Bible study at a drop-in center for homeless
men. We had sung a few praise choruses, and after the last one a man
timidly raised his hand and said, "I need to get one thing straight; is
Jesus coming back or something?" I've never had a greater privilege than
imparting this "news" to him, stammering in surprise, "Yes...as a matter
of fact he is!"

That may be the closest I'll ever come to feeling like the angel who
appeared to the shepherd of Bethlehem, bringing good tidings of great joy.
For this man whose life had been a story of abandonment, addiction, sin,
and shame, the news that Jesus was coming again to make a new heavens and
a new earth was tidings of the very best kind.

The last words of Jesus recorded in our Bibles (in the very next to last
verse of the book of Revelation) are a promise and a warning: "I am coming
soon!" Because we have this promise as our hope, when we sing, "O come, O
come, Emmanuel," we are not simply engaging in a role-playing exercise.
It may help us to imagine what it felt like to be Zechariah or one of the
other priests whose fathers and their father's fathers had been praying
for the Messiah for as long as they could remember. But their waiting is
more like ours than it is different, with one great exception: Christ has
already come once. This gives us the very best grounds for believing that
the prophecies of his second coming will be fulfilled.

This Advent, I hope that you will pray and long for the return of Christ.
When you sing these haunting words, let them be your own:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.


Betsy Childs is associate writer at Ravi Zacharias International
Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

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"To a group of aspiring high school graduates anxiously waiting to flip
their tassels to the other side of their caps, Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft,
offered the following words of mood-dampening wisdom: "Life is
not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few
employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your
own time."

His less than cheery list of life's rules, which began notably with, "Life
is not fair; get used to it," offered a plethora of hard-hitting advice
and a few other stabs of reality. Gates concluded his list with a final
shot of truth for the proud graduating class: "Television is not real
life," he said, "In real life people have to actually leave the coffee
shop and go to work."

Lest we have visions of depressed teenagers walking across the stage to
receive their diplomas that night, we should recall that most likely none
of them heard a word of the speech anyway. Or if, in between hoping the
20 bobby pins holding their cap in place were not causing permanent scalp
damage and visualizing the crowd's gasp as they tripped on the hem of
their robe and tumbled into the front row, they did manage to hear a
phrase or two, they surely don't remember it now.

It is once again the season of wisdom-filled addresses, Hallmark homilies,
and energetic advice giving to people who are not hearing a word of it.
Graduation is the occasion, and we are too excited to listen, even if it
is Bill Gates.

To be fair, it is not only beaming graduates that exhibit attention
difficulties in the midst of life's pomp and circumstance. The only part
of the minister's sermon at my wedding that I remember is when he turned
to my almost-husband and me and said, "This is the part of the ceremony
when I offer you some marital wisdom that you don't hear and won't
remember."

Events like graduation come only so often, and often after much work.
Like weddings, they usher in times of change and anticipation and call us
to attention to life in new ways. No one blames a graduate for not
remembering the commencement address or a bride for forgetting the advice
given to her as she anticipates "I do." When they fail to hear "The 10
Most Important Lessons in Life" or "3 Vital Steps to Marriage in the Real
World" we know they have not failed to see all that is important in life,
or all that lies before him in the real world. The opposite is usually
true—their minds are abounding with all that they see.

But a graduate that receives the day and his future with disinterest, a
bride that looks indifferently at the commitment before her and the days
ahead of her, is much harder to understand.

We are prone to these times of assessing life—birthdays and baptisms,
weddings and graduations; all seem to require careful attention. And we
recognize that to be wholly unconcerned with these moments in life is to
be something less than life-like. We gaze at the years ahead and look at
the years behind and sense the need to say something profound, to speak
into what is gone and what is coming. We see the need to find wisdom in
these eventful moments, to see a hope and a future. And it is often such
occasions that remind us that those who have found wisdom are particularly
blessed.

Unlike much of the commencement advice that is spoken and forgotten, the
wisdom of God's Word is wisdom that will not fade, nor speak into our
lives passively. It is wisdom worth returning to, speaking hope into the
future, bringing meaning into days both marked with excitement and scarred
with pain. In times of my own restless wandering, it was often specific
psalms and proverbs that kept returning to my mind, calling me to see the
foolishness of much of the world's advice and back to wisdom itself,
calling me to see with my eyes and ears the very One who made them.

As the proverb imparts, "Eyes that see and ears that hear, the Lord made
them both" (20:12). In the season of many events and the many seasons of
life, may it be his enduring wisdom we seek. As we congratulate jittery
brides and excited graduates with words of wisdom, let us remember that
the One who made those overwhelmed ears, the One who made our
wisdom-seeking eyes, longs that they would be stirred by his presence.
Jill Carattini
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