Titus 2:13    while we wait for the blessed hope--the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

    

There is always a time thing in the Christian life, or to be more precise a timing thing. Timing is important with God. He waits for things to happen before He moves and when He moves it is always the perfect time. He's let us know that He's working towards a particular point in history when His Son, Jesus, is going to leave heaven for a second time and come back to earth, but this time it won't be quietly and almost unobserved in the form of a little baby, but in the form of a conquering king who comes obviously, publicly and seen by all, to put right all that is wrong. He will come to destroy sin and all opposition to God. The world will have been given its chance to clean its act up, and now it's his turn to come and do what the world failed to do.

 

There is a sense whereby we live in constant frustration – we wish Jesus would change this world in which we live. We wish he would stop marriage break-ups, child abuse, crime, violence in the streets and so on. But he doesn't! He simply works in and through the Church to bring change. We're in a period of waiting – waiting for him to come in power and while we wait we have “to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age,” as Paul says to Titus in the previous verse. He's coming and our part is to make sure we are ready when he comes and that our lives are like this. May it be so.