I Am Coming Soon

A lamp is on in the window, and someone is watching the road.

You know that kind of waiting. You listen for the door. Every car that slows down, your heart jumps. Is it them? Is it now? That deep-down aching wait, the kind that makes a whole day lean toward one moment.

This book has been about that waiting from its very first page.

At the very end of the Bible, God pulled back a curtain and let a man named John see. It was a wonder, not a fright, a window thrown wide at the end of the long, long story. Out of the brightness came a voice, the voice above all voices, the One who had been there since the first morning of the world.

And this is what he said.

"I am coming soon."

He said it like a promise pressed into your hand. I am the Beginning and the End, he said. The first word and the last, the start of everything and the place it has all been running toward. Every story you have heard in this book, every rescue, every tear, every long night that turned to morning, all of it was him, coming closer.

Then he said it again.

"I am coming soon."

And the people who love him began to answer. The Spirit said it. And the bride, that is all of God's children, gathered from everywhere, the whole big family he promised he would not come home without, they said it too. One word, rising up like the cry you make when you finally see your own dear one coming up the path.

"Come," they said. "Come!"

The waiting and the answering met in the middle, and the sound of it filled heaven.

And he said: anyone who is thirsty, come. Come and drink. You do not have to clean yourself up first, or wait until you are good enough. Come thirsty, come empty-handed, come just as you are, and the water is free.

Then, a third time, soft and sure, like the last beat of a heart you could never forget:

"Yes. I am coming soon."

And the whole Bible, every page from the very first Let there be light, ends with one small, shining word from his people. The last thing they say. The last thing the book says.

"Come, Lord Jesus."

All this time you have been following the best part. Through gardens and arks and a baby asleep in the hay. Through a cross, and an empty tomb, and a family being gathered home. And again and again you were told: the best part is still coming.

The best part was never a place, or a present, or even the end of all crying, though that is coming too.

The best part is him. It is seeing his face. The One who loves you as if you were his only one, and loves every single child exactly that much, walking at last through the door.

And you do not have to wait for the joy to begin. He has already come near. He is with you right now, this very moment, closer than the page in your hands. The joy has already started in you, and it never, ever stops growing. Deeper and gladder and further in, forever and forever.

He is coming.

And the best part is him.