My wife and I have decided that we will be driving to upstate New York sometime this month to visit family. There’s nothing like planning ahead, I believe. In the interim, we will be wrapping all the Christmas gifts we have accumulated so that we can save the one hundred plus dollar postage we have paid in the past. This way we prolong the anticipation of Christmas over most of the year as we purchase presents all year and avoid the anxiety associated with the post "Black Thursday" mob shoppers.

As kids we whipped ourselves into a frenzy between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Today, the media creates the same hysteria though the true message of Christmas is totally absent.

Anticipation! In Old Testament times, our Biblical heroes expectantly awaited the coming of the Messiah. Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Isaiah - all lived their lives hoping for deliverance from sin. Even John the Baptist, Zacharius, Simeon, and I dare say even the Pharisees anticipated His coming, though the later knew Him not. It sometimes makes me wonder if I should be in a state of anticipation? Oh yes, I should. We all should.

Just as the prophets anticipated Christ’s first coming, we should anticipate His second coming. When will that be? No one knows. In Acts 1: 6 -7 and Matt. 24: 36 - 44, Christ emphasizes that not even He, but only the Father, knows when Christ will return. Like Noah who received directions from God that made absolutely no sense to him, yet obeyed in anticipation, we are to be ready and on the lookout for that day when the Lord returns. Just like Christmas, the event will far overshadow the time of anticipation.

What a time that will be for believers. Anticipation gone - satisfaction delivered. "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things have passed away: (Rev. 20: 4)

Come join us at Blake’s Chapel Advent Christian Church where we all are awaiting His return, in anticipation.