Please turn in your copies of God's Word to the Gospel of Luke. And for now, at least, I'll just read chapter 12, verses 35 to 38. Again, this is God's Word. Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning. And be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline a table, and he will come and serve them. If he comes in the second watch or in the third and finds them awake, Blessed are those servants. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word, and we ask that you would help us to be those who are alert and awake, even perhaps physically this morning, help us to be alert and awake for this sermon. Help us, especially we think of those mothers and fathers who've had sick little ones, or even young little ones who wake in the night. Help us, Lord, to be alert even now. And spiritually, we ask that you would give us ears that would hear, and eyes that would see, and hearts that would be receptive to your word. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, it's fair to say that most of the time we don't like to have to wait for things. I mean, if you have a day off, probably the last thing you want to do is go to the DMV and wait in a long line as people slowly work through the monotonous and rigorous paperwork of that sort of thing. No one is happy when they get the notification that your package that you've been eagerly anticipating has been misplaced by the post office and now you've got to wait another couple of weeks before you get it or, you know, the company replaces it. No one likes having to spend an extra hour in traffic because of some kind of roadworks up ahead. Usually we don't like waiting for things. However, it certainly makes waiting easier when we know that the thing we're waiting for is very good. When we know that the thing we're waiting for will bring us great joy, well then, sometimes we don't mind waiting at all when we know that it's worth the wait. In our passage, Jesus tells us that the Christian life is largely one of waiting. And yet, the thing that we're waiting for Well, it's worth the wait, because what we're waiting for is the second coming of Christ himself. This might seem like a kind of a detour from what Jesus has been teaching about, but actually it fits very well. Recall how Jesus has just taught extensively on how we're not to be distracted by the concerns and worries of this life. We're to be guarded against covetousness, which is idolatry, which idolizes and fixates on the stuff of this life. We're not to be anxious. We're not to be overwhelmed by the fears of this life. Instead, we're to entrust ourselves to the God who knows us and cares for us. Instead of seeking the things of this age, Jesus has called us to seek the kingdom of heaven. And he even promised us that it was the Father's good pleasure to give us the kingdom. Well, what this means is that we have the kingdom now in some measure, but what we're waiting for is the full glory of the kingdom to be revealed when Christ returns. The question that naturally arises in our minds is, when will this be? When will we have the full experience of the kingdom of Christ? You know, some Christians get so preoccupied with trying to read the times, trying to figure out when exactly Jesus is coming back. But as much as we'd like to know when, we'd like to know the precise day and hour, Jesus hasn't told us. Far more important than when Jesus is returning, is how we are to wait as we expect his coming. So the question then that emerges from this text is not when is Jesus coming, but are you ready? Are you waiting with expectation? Are you living now in light of his coming? Well, Jesus helps us in this text to know exactly how to wait well for his coming as he speaks to our consolation as we await Christ's return, our certainty as we await Christ's return, and our calling as we await Christ's return, our consolation, our certainty, and our calling. So first, our consolation as we await Christ's return. Jesus begins in verse 35 by giving us two images that illustrate how we are to wait and be ready for his return. He says, stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning. Well, the first phrase, stay dressed for action, is literally in the Greek, gird up your loins. You see, in the ancient world, the kind of clothes that they wore were more like long flowing robes. And so if you ever had to move anywhere in a hurry or you had to do manual labor, well, you'd kind of tie up your robes. That's what it meant to gird your loins. And so maybe in modern parlance, Jesus is saying, tie your shoelaces, tighten up your belt a notch, be ready. What's interesting is that this is language borrowed from the Exodus. You remember how on the night of the Passover, the instructions that were given to the Israelites, they were to eat their meal with walking stick in hand, with their sandals tied, as it were, strapped. They were to be fully dressed, they were to be ready to go. The lamb was slaughtered, the food was on the table, the blood was on the doorpost, the angel of death was coming, and they were to be ready for when God would give the signal. And Jesus, thus, is painting our experience with the colors of that first exodus. What this tells us is that for us also, it is a dark night. It is a time of challenge and concern, and yet it also tells us that, like with the Israelites, our redemption is at hand. And so we must be ready for the glorious second exodus. We must be found ready when that signal comes. We must not be found in our PJs, asleep. No, we must be alert and ready with it, the porch light on, ready to go. Well, with that small introduction, Jesus next likens our waiting to servants who are awaiting their master's return from a wedding. Verse 36, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. It's helpful for us to get a sense of the world that Jesus is describing, to put it in somewhat maybe more familiar imagery for us. Imagine a large estate in pre-World War I England. Think of something like Downton Abbey. with its estate and its manor house and its hive of servant activity. Well, the lord of this estate is going away with his wife up the country to feast at a wedding feast in some other place. And the servants don't know exactly when he'll be back. There's no email, there's no phones, there's no text messaging. And so he could come back at any time. And so they need to be ready for his return. The pantry needs to be stocked. The house needs to be dusted, the fires need to be lit, and all the servants need to be standing, prim and proper, dressed and ready to welcome back the master and his wife when he returns. Likewise, as we await Christ's return, we are to be as these servants. were to be found ready when he returns. And what is our consolation and our hope as we await his return? Well, you remember Simeon and Anna from chapter two. Simeon was waiting for the consolation of Israel. Anna was waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem. These saints were waiting for Christ's first coming with certain promises in mind, consoling them. What's our consolation as we await Christ's second coming? Well, Jesus tells us in verse 37, blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline a table and he will come and serve them. If he comes in the second watch or in the third and finds them awake, blessed are those servants. Twice, Jesus pronounces blessing on those servants who are awake and alert and ready when the master comes home. And not only does he pronounce blessing, but he also shows us what that blessing looks like. He gives us a picture of blessing, doesn't he? When the master comes, he will serve the servants and have them recline at his table. This is a shocking role reversal. You know, we are the servants in the Downton Abbey estate. We are the scullery maids in the basement, not to be seen or heard, peeling the potatoes. We are those shuffling about lighting fires and polishing and cleaning. We're the footmen mending jackets and polishing shoes for the master's return. And we have the table set and we've all the fine cutlery and fine china out for when the master comes. And yet Jesus says that when the master comes, he won't let us serve him. Instead, the master will take off his fine tuxedo, his dinner jacket, and he'll don an apron, and he'll go down to the basement, he will go to the kitchen, and he'll whip up a cake, and he'll prepare a meal for his servants, and then he will seat us at his table, and he'll pull out the finest of silverware and fine china. What master in the ancient world or in pre-war England or in any age would do this for his people? What master would become a servant for his people? None but Jesus. Christ's promise to serve us is our great comfort, our great consolation, and our great hope as we await his coming. This is what we're anticipating. This is what we're looking forward to when the Master returns. The feast Jesus describes, does it remind you of anything? Well, it's a lot like the promise that we heard in our call to worship from Isaiah 25, where it says that on this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food, full of marrow, of aged wine, well-refined. This, of course, as we heard, is the feast at which every tear will be wiped away. This is the feast that will be the celebration of death's death, that it will be swallowed up, that great veil that covered the nations. Jesus not only points us back to Isaiah with this imagery, but ultimately it points our faith forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19. This is the great banquet feast of heaven, where the Lord will serve his servants. Can you imagine it? Can you imagine being served by Jesus? To have him set a feast before us? It almost sounds too good to be true. Perhaps it might even sound improper that we as creatures would be served by the master, the Lord of all. And yet that's precisely the point. You don't sit at this table because of your works or because you've earned a place there. No, your place at that table is by grace. That's why it sounds too good to be true. It is the grace of the Lord Jesus. And this is what we wait for patiently. You know, everything in the world is really opposed to us having this eternal perspective. Everyone and everything is trying to convince us that this life is all there is. And really what you should be concerned about and really what should fill your mind is, you know, the stuff of this age, that you need more of it. You need more stuff, you need more possessions, you need more security, you need more comfort and ease. You don't have enough. But this promise of a future feast is the consolation that helps us stay focused on what really matters, even amid all the distractions of this life. If this is the heavenly treasure, if this is the portion that even David, as we heard last week, delighted in and looked forward to, if this is what we are looking forward to, How on earth could we be distracted by the trinkets and cheap tinsel things of this age? This glorious vision of not only feasting with Christ, but being served by him and honored at his table. This is the means by which we fight covetousness and despair. And this is the means by which we stay alert and ready for his second coming. And one thing in particular that helps us to keep this truth in focus and to keep this truth central in our hearts and in our minds is the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper not only looks back to the cross, it also points forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb and the second coming of Christ, since it proclaims his death until he comes. The Lord's Supper then is a sampling, a taster, a preview of that great final banquet of heaven. If you've ever had to plan for a wedding, you know that maybe at the wedding reception, they give the bride and the groom and the family a taster of the wedding feast that will happen when the wedding is, you know, when it eventually happens. And likewise, the Lord's Supper is a tasting, it's a sampler of that great final banquet feast of heaven. In the supper, Jesus gives us the stuff of feasts. He gives us bread to feed us and satisfy us, and he gives us wine to make our hearts glad. But more than that. He gives us himself. The elements point to the fullness we have in Christ. The bread, of course, as we've seen throughout the Gospel of Luke, as with the wine, shows to the satisfaction Jesus brings us and the fullness that we have in him. Wine, inasmuch as it makes the heart of man glad, points us to the true gladness that we have in Christ himself. Yes, the elements really matter. The supper, then, is the means by which our faith is strengthened in the knowledge of our union with Christ. This is why Reformed theologians like John Calvin, and later a Reformed Orthodox theologian like John Owen, desire to lead their churches back to the practice of the early church, and arguably of the apostolic church, in celebrating the Lord's Supper weekly, to have a weekly feast that Christ sets before us. Because we are weak, and because our minds are so often fixated on the things of this world, we need to have a regular feasting upon Christ, and thus have our faith fed in this way. Again, with the great comfort that it is our master's pleasure and glad pleasure to give us this feast and to feed our faith through his ordained means of grace. Well, this is the consolation that is ours as we await Christ's return. Secondly, Jesus provides us with certainty as we await his return. Jesus tells us that there is something we need to know for certain as we await his return. Look at verses 39 and 40. But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. Well, the first thing that Jesus wants us to know is what we don't know. We don't know when he is returning. Jesus continues to use the imagery of a master and a house, but this time he changes the imagery from a master who's coming home to a thief, a burglar who's trying to break into the house. And basically Jesus is saying that if the homeowner knew when the thief was going to break in, well, he'd be standing there with a shotgun. He'd be ready for him. However, that's the nature of being robbed. You never know when you're gonna be broken into. Thieves wait for the opportune time when you're not ready. Who can anticipate when their car will be broken into, for example? You never know. And that's why you need to be vigilant and alert and ready at all times. And so the analogy is, because we don't know when Jesus is returning, we must always be ready And Jesus couldn't be clearer when he says, you also must be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. But isn't this what we see happening again and again in the church? Some leader will come out with a book or a series of videos and they'll claim to have found the secret formula or the hidden equation to know exactly when Jesus is going to return. They'll have their charts and their diagrams and their equations, and they'll hold their Bible sideways up against their newspaper, and they'll tell you, well, when Russia does X and Iran does Y, and then if Israel at that precise moment does this thing, well, then we know exactly when Jesus is gonna return. And so you can sell all your property and give it to me. And time and again, over the history of the church, these people crop up. But beloved, do not fall for these false teachers, whether they're online or on TV, or even you find them in reputable Christian bookstores, because Jesus couldn't be clearer. You don't know when I'm coming again, he says. No one can predict his second coming. But that's not all that he wants us to know with certainty. While we don't know when he will return, we do know for certain that he will return. As he said, you also must be ready for the Son of Man is coming. Know for certain that Jesus is coming again. Jesus came first to die for sinners, and he is coming again to judge the world. Right now we are living, as it were, between the times. That is, between his first coming and his second coming. His second coming then is the next great big event of redemptive history. And the New Testament has much to say about his second coming. Jesus isn't going to return after a 1,000-year golden age that we can calculate or predict. Nor will we be able to predict his coming based on the geopolitics and diplomacy that takes place in the Middle East. No, his coming will be as a thief in the night when you do not expect it. And his return will be visible and bodily. On that day when Jesus ascended into heaven, two angels told his disciples, Acts 111, this Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. That is, he ascended bodily, he will return bodily. And his return won't be a secret, known only to a select few who are raptured. No, all will behold his return. Revelation 1-7. Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him. His return will be loud and triumphant, 1 Thessalonians 4-16. The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command. with the voice of an archangel and with the sound of the trumpet of God. You won't hear a dog whistle. You'll hear a cry of command and the blast of a trumpet. His coming will be sudden, it will be visible, it will be triumphant. And in his coming, he will bring judgment. Jesus said it himself many times, like Revelation 22, 12. Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me to repay everyone for what he has done. This is something we confess every time we confess the Apostles Creed as a church, that he is coming to judge the living and the dead. His coming will be sudden, it will be visible, it will be triumphant. And he is coming to judge the living and the dead. And so he says to all of us this morning, be ready, be ready. Well, our temptation as we await Christ's return, as we live between the times, is to not be ready, or at least not to take it so seriously. You know, a preacher once commented that the devil's greatest strategy isn't so much to get us to outright deny that there is a day of final judgment, but instead to lead us to think that we have all the time in the world. That's certainly what the world says and thinks. You know, why wait? Why wait and why live holy and self-controlled lives when you can live for today? Jesus isn't coming. Or if he is, you've got plenty of time. You have time to eat and drink and be merry. You have many years. Jesus isn't coming soon. You have plenty of time for a little spiritual slumber, a little folding of the arms. But think back to the previous passage with the rich man and his barns. He said that very same thing, didn't he? Oh, I have secured for my soul many years. And what did God say to him? Fool, not many years, tonight. And whether Christ returns in our lifetime or whether we die and stand before him, we will stand before him and we will face his judgment. The apostle Peter, as we read earlier, addresses the same issue with scoffers, scoffing in the last days, saying, where is the promise of his coming? And Peter says in no uncertain terms, with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Jesus is coming, as he has promised, to judge the world. The question then is not, is he coming? The question is not, when is he coming? The question is, are you ready for his coming? Are you ready? Are you prepared to meet the Lord of heaven and earth as he comes next, not as an infant, but as a reigning and conquering warrior king, ready to judge the nations? Well, what does it mean to be found ready? Does it mean that, well, we have to have done a certain number of good works? Do we need to have given a certain amount of charity or done enough good things for people? Well, certainly the life of faith should be accompanied by those things, but no, that ultimately is not what it means to be found ready. To be found ready means to be one who is anticipating His coming. And to anticipate the Master's coming means that you're trusting in His coming. It means you're trusting in the Master. And so the one who is prepared for his coming is the one who has faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who is not trusting in self or looking to and idolizing the things of this age, but instead trusting in the righteousness of Christ. And thus, the one who is found ready is the one who is clothed in Christ's righteousness. And this one will be served by Christ on his return in that great banquet feast of the Lamb. But judgment awaits the one who is not ready. Well, dear friend, are you ready or not? Jesus provides us with consolation. Jesus provides us with certainty as we await his return. But what does that waiting look like? What are we to do as we await his return? Well, that's the third thing we see, our calling as we await Christ's return. Well, Peter, always the one to speak up, asks Jesus, Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for all? Now remember that Jesus, his pattern and his practice is to speak to the crowds in parables. in order to conceal the truth. But then he'll take his disciples aside and explain the mysteries of the kingdom to them. And so Peter thinks that, OK, well, yeah, OK, not knowing the day and the hour and the thief in the night, that's for the crowds. But I'm going to ask Jesus, and surely Jesus is going to spill the beans to me. He's going to write in the sand with his timelines and charts and all of that. It's like when I tell my children, maybe at the dinner table, that I have some kind of surprise for them, and inevitably there's one child who maybe scoots their chair a little closer to me or comes alongside me and says, it's okay, Dad, you can whisper it in my ear. And that's what Peter's doing. It's like, you know, okay, they don't know, but you can tell me. But Jesus couldn't have been clearer. I'm not telling you, Jesus says. You do not know. I will come when you do not expect. And so notice that Jesus doesn't really answer Peter's question, which kind of indicates that it wasn't really a very good question. He doesn't give him a direct answer. Instead, what he does is he focuses Peter on his task, on his calling. He says in verse 42, Who then is the faithful and wise manager whom his master will set over his household to give them their portion of food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. Well, again, we need to kind of get our heads and minds back into the ancient world and to think of how things operated then. In the ancient world, in Roman times, a master would be the owner of his estate and he would appoint a manager over his estate. So those are two different people, the master and the manager. It was the manager's responsibility really to manage the staff and especially to care for the other servants or slaves. You know, in Downton Abbey terms, think of the head butler who's in charge of managing all the staff and taking care of them. And as Jesus points out, the chief duty is to provide these daily meals for the other slaves to make sure they're cared for. While the master is away, the manager has the duty to oversee and care for the other servants of the house. And when the master returns and he sees that his manager has been faithful in his responsibilities, he'll reward him. However, there's a second scenario that Jesus gives. Imagine that the manager says to himself, my master is delayed in his coming and begins to beat the male and female servants and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him to pieces and put him with the unfaithful. Well, in this second scenario, you don't have a faithful manager, but an unfaithful manager. And he thinks to himself, oh, the master's going to be away. I've got another couple of weeks till he gets back. And so he squanders the food. He eats, and he drinks, and he gets drunk, and he beats the other servants instead of providing for them and caring for them. And he thinks he's getting away with it. But Jesus says, when the master of the house comes back, he'll cut him in two. It's severe language, but it is the judgment for unfaithfulness. What's the meaning of this parable? Well, in the parable, Jesus is the master of the house, who is away, but will return. The manager, or steward of the house, is his apostles, and by extension, elders of the church. In fact, Paul even uses this same language when he refers to us as managers or stewards of the mysteries of God. And their duty is the same. Think of Jesus' call to Peter to feed my sheep. The manager's chief role is to care for and feed the other servants of the house. This is a picture of the elder's role, to shepherd the flock and to feed through preaching and teaching. Thus, in this parable, there is both an exhortation and a warning to those of us who are elders in the household of faith. First, there is a warning to unfaithful elders. The unfaithful steward doesn't feed the other servants of the house, rather he feeds off of them. This is the picture of an unfaithful ministry, where instead of feeding the sheep by nourishing them with the gospel, the elder beats the sheep with the law and with man-made rules. An abusive manager makes the other servants do all the work so that he can eat and drink and get drunk. He's like the rich fool in the previous parable. Both the rich fool and this unwise and unfaithful manager really have the same problem. They both think that there is no judgment, there is no accountability. The master's away or he's delayed. But in both cases, the master will return and he will judge. And here in this example, when the master returns and he finds this level of unfaithfulness, such a leader will be judged in the extreme. As one person said, a high calling does not protect from the consequences of unfaithfulness. That's the warning Jesus gives to elders in the church. What's the exhortation? Well, the exhortation is for us as elders to be faithful in our calling. The job of the elder is to shepherd the flock. It is like the steward or manager in the house to care for the other servants and to set before them healthy spiritual meals. As stewards, we are called to care for the church. And like cooks, we are to nourish the saints with gospel meals. Elders are not called by Christ to be great or amazing or famous or maybe even memorable. but simply to be faithful to their calling, to be faithful to the charge that God has given them. This is the repeated refrain to Timothy, isn't it? You read Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus, and what's the repeated refrain? Timothy, I want your name plastered all over Ephesus. No. Timothy, be faithful. Be patient with your flock. Don't beat them. Be faithful. Listen to them. Work with them. Be faithful to Scripture. Be faithful to publicly read the Word. Be faithful to the pattern of sound words handed down through tradition. Brothers, fellow elders of this Church, let us be sobered against any unfaithfulness. It is a weighty thing to be ordained and called as an elder of the Church. Let us ask ourselves, if the Lord would return today, would our service reflect fidelity to the doctrines of his word? And would Christ see us beating the sheep or feeding the sheep? Let us be sobered, but let us also be encouraged. Let us be encouraged that what Christ has called us to is faithfulness. He hasn't called us to be innovators of church doctrine or church practice. He hasn't called us to be radicals. No, he calls us to be faithful. May God help us that we might be found faithful when Christ returns. Well, finally, Jesus moves from describing the managers of the household to describing the ordinary servants of the household. Verse 47. And that servant who knew his master's will, but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given of him, of him much will be required. And from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more. So notice how there's maybe a cascading or different tiers of unfaithfulness and thus beatings that will come as a result. The manager is completely unfaithful and he's caught in two. Well then you have the servant who knew what to do but wasn't ready and he's beaten. But then there's sort of the ignorant servant and they're beaten lightly. Now, Jesus' point here isn't for us to ask, okay, which beating am I gonna get? No, that's not Jesus' point at all. The point that Jesus makes is the very last thing he says. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required. And from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand much more. What Jesus is saying is that all of us have been given a level of knowledge and understanding. All of us have been given gifts to be used in the church and even to help our fellow man. All of us have a calling that we are to fulfill. Elders certainly have a weighty calling, as do deacons, but all of us have some calling in God's household for which we will be held accountable. that Christ has given each one of us so much, and thus much will be required of us. The question therefore for you is, what have you been entrusted with? You may not be an elder or a deacon, but you do have a calling in this world, and certainly in the Church of Jesus Christ. And just as with elders, Christ doesn't call you to some kind of radical Christian life. No, what he calls you to is faithfulness, Well, that should both be convicting, but also very encouraging. Because what it means is that there's nothing dishonorable or subpar about leading an ordinary, faithful, Christian life. Far from being subpar, this is your calling. Maybe you're an older saint and you're starting to feel your limitations. You just can't do what you used to be able to do. You get tired more easily. You struggle to remember names and details like you once did. And perhaps now you're feeling discouraged that you can't serve other people the way you once did. Or maybe you're a stay-at-home mom and your entire world revolves around your home and your children and you hear that constant refrain from the world that a real woman is a career woman who's climbing the corporate ladder. What are you? Or maybe you find yourself weak and tired and you find yourself comparing yourself to other moms or maybe even other women in the church who seem to have it so much more together than you do. But remember, dear ones, God hasn't called you to that. God hasn't called you to be super mom or super dad or super anything. What he has called you to is simply to be faithful in your calling, given your limitations, given your strengths, given your weaknesses. He calls you to be faithful. God may not have given you the grace to be super mom or super whatever, but he has given you the grace and he will continue to give you the grace to be faithful to him so that you might be found faithful as you await the Lord's return. And with that, let us all be like men who are waiting for the master to come home from the wedding feast. Let us be diligent in our calling as we await his return. Let us look to his coming with certainty and let us fill our hearts and minds with the great consolation that those servants who are found ready when he returns will be met with the master's smile and he will seat us at his great banquet feast on the last day. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, once again we pray that you would Fix our minds on Christ and the great promises and consolations that are ours. Help us to wait patiently like Simeon and Anna who waited for the consolation of Israel, who waited for the redemption of Jerusalem. May we stand among the many saints throughout the ages who waited patiently and even now have the consolation of Christ himself. Fill our hearts with this truth that we might live it out as we await Christ's coming. In Jesus' name, amen.