The one who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!
Revelation 22:20 (NET)
Asking for What He Promised
Yes, I am coming soon. Jesus says that about himself, as the one who testifies to these things, and the answer that comes back is a request for the very same thing. Come, Lord Jesus.
I can go as far as the asking. What soon means on his side of it, and what that morning will look like, I’ve quit trying to say.
A binder works in thin cotton gloves, because the oil off a person’s fingers shows up on the paper years later, long after everyone has forgotten who touched it. She sews the signatures, glues the spine, sets the block in the press, and leaves it overnight. Whoever opens that book will do it in a room she’ll never see.
Come, Lord Jesus gets prayed in days like hers. Over a sink and in traffic, by people who have to be somewhere at nine and couldn’t tell you what they expect or when. It’s a short prayer and it asks for nothing but him, so it survives the weeks when the rest of a person’s faith has gone flat.
Soon has been a long time. People have prayed this their whole lives and died still waiting, and he said soon anyway. He said it as the one who testifies to these things. He put his own name behind it, and that promise has kept a lot of people upright on days when they had no other reason to get up.
Come, Lord Jesus belongs to whoever’s reading it. It’s a sentence anybody’s allowed to use about this week, and about the part of a life that hasn’t moved in years.
In the morning she opens the press, runs a gloved thumb down the spine, and sets the book on the shelf by the window.
A Prayer to Remember
There’s a full week ahead of me and nothing in it I’m waiting for. You’ve promised to come back, God, and I’d like that to be the thing I want most. Put the wanting where I can feel it, and let the asking be something I mean when I say it.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
