If you're married, do you remember what was like anticipating your marriage?
I remember vividly the frustrations and the longing involved in dating my now wife. The desire we both felt to just 'get on with our lives' as a new unit. The annoying (and a little scary) late night walks home by myself down poorly lit alleyways, the constant need for self-discipline and boundaries around our intimacy as we tried hard to pursue purity before marriage - accountability friendships played a major part in my life back then!
I was reminded of all this as I read the final chapter of Charlie Cleverley's superb commentary on The Song of Songs. He draws a parallel between the book's final verse and the final verse of Revelation:
"Come away, my beloved,
and be like a gazelle
or like a young stag
on the spice-laden mountains."
(Song of Songs 8:14)
"He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus."
(Revelation 22:20)
The Song ends with the bride pleading, longing for her husband to return to her. She wants nothing more than his presence and their life together, and this is a shadow of the church's longing for Christ our husband.
The Bible is a love story and the final verse bears this out. He came once, we knew him once. We could touch him and embrace him once, we could hear him and sit at his feet but now, with his going to the Father, we are lovesick for him. His Spirit in us nurtures our longing, gives us a taste of his presence and draws us deeper out of ourselves and into that desire, our desire for the moment of final consummation when he returns and heaven and earth are finally united!
Cleverley points out however that for many (most?) of us we don't long for Christ's return very much at all. In fact, if we're honest, we ever so slightly want him to delay coming for as long as possible. We want Jesus to return, but first we want to enjoy watching our children or grandchildren grow up, or we want to go on that long awaited 'trip of a lifetime' or to buy our first home, or get our dream job. We want to see and experience life's major milestone's before he rolls up the heavens like a scroll and moves every mountain and island from its place (Rev. 6:14). We want Jesus to return, just no yet!
This is very different to the Apostle Paul's final words in 1 Corinthians:
If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed. Maranatha! (come Lord Jesus)
(1 Cor. 16:22 - NASB)
The statement: 'we want Jesus to return, just not yet' makes me think of Augustine's famous prayer 'Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.' This seems an appropriate comparison given the link between intimacy with God and sexual union with another person. The longing we experience, the anticipation of consummation, and the way it dominates so much of our lives. Sex is a window into the ultimate union and communion that we anticipate with God. Sex is a shadow, a feint knowing in comparison to the solid and rich knowledge of God.
It all reminded me of something that C.S. Lewis says about chocolate...
I think our present outlook might be like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure, should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer ‘No,’ he might regard the absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their raptures don’t bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of. The boy knows chocolate: he does not know the positive thing that excludes it. We are in the same position. We know the sexual life; we do not know, except in glimpses, the other thing which, in Heaven, will leave no room for it.
Why would a child anticipate the departure of the best thing, the most desirable thing, the most delicious thing, he's ever experienced? Surely nothing can be better than chocolate! That's how many of us feel about the return of Christ - you mean I have to give up the excitement of Christmas mornings or the thrill of downhill skiing or sunny days by the beach?
And yet the more we see of him, the more contemplate the mind of the one who invented all that we can see, the more we begin to realise he would never "give us a snake if we asked for a fish, or a stone if we asked for a loaf of bread" (Matthew 7:9-11). No, he will always give us more than we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).
His coming will be the deepest, richest, most delightful and soul satisfying thrill we can imagine. I'm certain that one day we'll look back and say "I can't believe I once wanted to see my kids grow up, over this!"
Come Lord Jesus!