So my roommate and best friend is getting married. As each day gets closer the checklist gets smaller. I have loved rooming with this soon to be bride; watching the excitement and anticipation for what is to come. As the days get less and less the excitement builds. This Bride and Groom wait in Anticipation for the day they are united as husband and wife.
Watching their anticipated day play out has been an incredible challenge to me in my relationship to Christ. The earthly husband and wife is a picture of the ultimate Bride and Groom; the church with Christ. We should be waiting with excitement and anticipation for the day the church is united with its Groom, Christ. The return of Christ should be an anticipated day. Anticipating the moment, planning and preparing should be done for when we are ridden of our earthly bodies and finally see the face of our Groom. We should be actively participating in the coming of our Savior, not because we have to or because it somehow affects our salvation but because we love Christ more than this earth and what it may bring. We look forward to the day we are united with Him; longing for the moment we are finally joined together. As we live out each day it should be with the hope and desire for the day our groom returns for us. We long for a better country, a better home. We long for the home and relationship we were created for.
Hebrews 11: 13-16
"All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."
