Stay Awake

by: Lou Lotz

Somewhere driving around Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a rusty blue Plymouth with a bumper sticker that says: In Case of the Rapture, Grab my Steering Wheel! That fellow may not be Reformed in his thinking, but he is acting on the premise that God is still a factor in human affairs. When we stop expecting Christ’s return, we concede that we don’t really believe God remains a factor in human history.

The early church believed in the imminent, any-day return of Christ. This reflected a belief that needs to be resurrected in our day: the belief that God still affects life today and that in the end, God will have his way with this wayward world.

Let this percolate in your head: Jesus Christ has a future. He is not just a great figure of the past, like Plato, or Confucius, or Abraham Lincoln. Jesus is not just a sacred memory; he is a living Lord. And he will come again. Maybe even today. This world has not seen the last of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus will come again. He is not glued to his seat at the right hand of the Father. Most of the verbs in the Apostles’ Creed are in the past tense: “conceived, born, suffered, crucified, dead, buried.” But the creed also speaks in the future tense: “From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” He shall come. Jesus has a future. “Therefore stay awake, for you know not when the master of the house will come.”