“In Limbo On Purpose”

Sunday, June 02, 2019

When a couple is expecting a baby (my wife is due to deliver our third son tomorrow, so you can guess what’s on my mind), they live their lives with a different outlook as the delivery gets closer and closer. They still go to work or classes or the gym, they still spend time with their friends, and they maintain most of the same routines as usual. But there is a constant awareness that their whole modus operandi may be dropped at a moment’s notice when it’s time for the baby to come. They spend their waking and working hours knowing that it all might be interrupted soon for them to meet someone they’ve been looking forward to meeting for awhile.

In that outlook, there is a healthy example for how we think about the Lord’s return at the judgment day. It helps to understand the continuation of daily life (Jesus prayed: “I do not ask that you take them out of the world” [John 17:15]), and it helps us think rightly about that final day, when God’s people—even those who are asleep—will be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thess. 4:17). Just like a couple anxiously looks forward to the day when they happily drop everything and go be meet the person they have longed to meet for awhile, Christians anxiously look forward to dropping everything and meeting the Lord, whom we and our fellow saints have looked forward to seeing face-to-face for centuries.

Does that mean we are living in limbo? Yes, to some extent. And we are doing so deliberately. Our feet are firmly planted on the soil of the earth, but our hope is anchored in Heaven, from which we await the return of our Savior and King, Jesus of Nazareth.

- Dan Lankford, minister

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