When I was a very little boy, before we moved to the country, we lived in a city row house with just enough room between the house beside us to accommodate a walkway and a small patch of ground. The patch had no grass. It was perfect for playing marbles. I don’t really remember the rules of the game but there were three small holes I had dug and it had something to do with using a shooter to knock other marbles into the holes. The very best part of my day was when my father would come home from school. He would get down on his hands and knees and play marbles with me. I would smooth the dirt, rub the marbles clean on my pants, sit on the steps of the porch and wait for his car, our car, an old black prewar something. I don’t know what it was.
How strange it is that so many decades later I am still waiting for my Father. I have grown up in a church that is waiting. The entire concept of waiting is embedded in its name. I have watched my friends and family engaged in this waiting process. We speak of it almost weekly. It is based upon the promises of Jesus. I wonder if in some undesigned way the waiting has kept us from truly appreciating the now. We almost want the world to get worse and worse so Jesus will return and take us to our Father. Catastrophes are almost welcomed.
If I read carefully what Jesus said, I wonder if we have missed the promises that once we make Him the Lord of our lives, the blessings and benefits of citizenship in the Kingdom of the Father are not merely the future but are the now. See John 5.
Written by Roger Bothwell on June 1, 2010
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org