1 Thessalonians 3:9–13

⁹What thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God, ¹⁰as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith?

¹¹Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, ¹²and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, ¹³so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

The Season of Advent begins this week in the Christian Church. One word that could describe the season of Advent is waiting. There are other words to help us understand Advent, words like hope and repentance and anticipation; however, none are as fitting as waiting. We are waiting for the coming of Christ in Bethlehem and waiting and watching for our hope and salvation. We are waiting to see in the flesh the One who was crucified for our sake, risen, and ascended, and will return in glory with His angels. We wait because there is nothing we can do to make what we are looking forward to take place even though we desperately need it to happen.

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The Thessalonians were waiting. They felt incomplete and inadequate in what they had learned. They needed and longed for more instruction and wisdom that Paul could bring them when he returned. Even more, they were waiting for Jesus to return. Unfortunately, with all their interest in Christ’s return, the Thessalonians got distracted from the tasks at hand. Though their interest was centered in the truth, they forgot that waiting on the Lord also carries the responsibility of doing constructive things. Waiting for Christ is a time for doing the deeds of Christ by reflecting faith, trust, and confidence in God to others.

Surely you have begun to realize how similar we are to the Thessalonians. Perhaps you have a sense of waiting for something or someone. You may have a feeling that something is incomplete and needs to be put into the proper place in your life. Each of us expresses it in a different way, but it is there in all of us.

So, all we can do is wait for a future to come to us from beyond our own sinful self-destructing realm. Advent announces our future as something made by God, not by human effort. Advent turns our focus to the One who will be born, in the little town of Bethlehem by the gracious, saving act of God. Advent reminds us that He who came will return to this world with its rumblings of war, the shaking of nations, the turmoil of families, the constant meaningless mumblings and uproars of society plaguing our present existence, and the overwhelming heaving of the economy. The same Jesus born in Bethlehem will return as the Prince of Peace and Lord of lords so that “where [He] is, [we] might be also” (cf. Jn. 14:3). On this Jesus, the Child who will come again, we wait like the Thessalonians during this Advent season.

So, when you hear of the return of Jesus with all His mighty and renewing power this Advent season, the Lord is supplying “what lacking in your faith” (12) that He may “establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints (13). The wait may seem endless and cause us to wonder if the One we are waiting for will ever come again. But in Advent, He makes Himself known to us through the remembrance of the birth of the Child of Bethlehem. And in the present, Jesus comes to us through His Holy Word and in the flow of Baptismal waters. He feeds us with His own body and blood, in and under the bread and wine of His Holy Supper, to sustain us while we wait until the day when He comes to judge the living and the dead with all His saints. By His grace we are among them.

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