Packages and Christ

Last Friday, I ordered a package from Barnes and Noble: a four-ingredient cookbook. All week long I was anxiously waiting for my package to arrive. Here at school, we get e-mail notifications whenever a package has come in for us. So, I would check my e-mail regularly, just hoping that I would get my cookbook. When the package came, I felt like such a little girl! I opened it up, smelled the pages, and leafed through the book in order to find some neat recipes.

While I was waiting for my package to come, I was reminded of the imminent return of Christ. Like a package being delivered, we never know when exactly he's coming, but we should always be anticipating his return. We should be looking forward to his return with anxious anticipation, hardly being able to contain our excitement that today might be that day. In my human and fallen nature, I have often said, "Lord, wait! I want to get married, have kids, grow old, live my life! I don't want to leave earth yet!" But, these are sayings that Satan puts in our minds to distract us from the glories of Heaven. In our finite minds we can't imagine a perfect place, more beautiful and wonderful than anything here on earth. How selfish of us to want to live OUR lives, when in reality, we should be living our lives for HIM. We should be anxiously anticipating his return, like we would eagerly anticipate a special package in the mail.

What a blessing to know that we can even go to heaven! Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: "And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come" (I Thessalonians 1:10). Heaven is what keeps us from God's eternal judgment. It's a place where we can be safe from God's wrath on this wicked world during the tribulation. This world is not our home. We are residents of heaven: "Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample. (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) For our [citizenship] is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself" (Phil. 3:17-21).

In this one thing I think it's alright to be childish: we are allowed to be excited and anticipatory of the coming of our Savior! So let us walk, not forgetting the reason we have been redeemed: to live for God and worship him for  the rest of our days on earth and for all eternity. Our chief goal is to glorify God: "...whatsoever ye do, do ALL to the glory of God" (I Corinthians 10:31b)