Eagerly Waiting

I feel like these past 9 months have flown by. Caroline and I are expecting the arrival of our first child, Graham, any day now. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few months thinking about the days that lie just around the corner for us. I’ve also wondered a lot about what parenthood will look like, and how things will change, knowing full well that even though I try and picture these things, the reality is that things most likely will be entirely different than what I’ve imagined. Despite this, it doesn’t stop me from looking ahead and still trying to imagine what fatherhood will be like. The more I think about it, the more I realize that this is an interesting place to be in, but one that is teaching me a lot about the hope I have in Christ for salvation. Right now, I feel kind of like a pseudo-father, someone who has helped to create a living human
being and is already starting to think like a father, experiencing in a very small way the sacrifices of being a father. Yet at the same time, I’m not yet really a father. I was told by someone wise not too long ago, that fatherhood is something that is earned in moments like the wee hours of the morning rocking the baby to sleep, or in the countless sacrifices that parents make throughout the lifetime of their children. In a small way, I am now a father; but when Graham arrives, I will become even more of a father, and have an entirely different perspective of being a parent than I do now, if that makes sense. This is very much like the tension we live in now, as believers of Jesus Christ. We have already been saved through the blood of Jesus, and nothing can take that away from those who trust that His death and resurrection are the only means by which we can hope in for salvation. At the same time, we are not yet fully saved, we are still living in a broken world with broken bodies. Scripture promises us of a time when we will be fully restored, resurrected just as Jesus is, living in eternity in the presence of God and in the absence of sin and evil. This is what we fix our eyes on, and spend our time longing for. We eagerly await the fulfillment of this promise to us, wondering what it will be like to live in bodies that don’t age or decay, in the presence of our mighty and loving God, surrounded by relationships void of sin. It is this promise that we cling to during difficult times, and we rejoice now because we are saved, but not-yet fully saved and restored as we one day will be. Just as my thoughts and mindset is already different than it was 9 months ago, we too are different and made new as believers in Jesus Christ. But one day we will know and experience in a complete way what salvation is, just as I very soon will know and experience fatherhood in a more complete way.