by Sherri Ellington

As Christmas approaches each year, there are preparations to be made — in many cultures this means lights and decorations, gifts, foods, special cookies. Lebanon is known for turning its historical souqs into joyous, festive venues. But, due to the heartbreaking conflict in Gaza, last Christmas was subdued and sad in the Middle East. This year, Christmas in the Middle East may be even more somber.

Advent, literally meaning “arrival,” is the season in the church calendar for the four Sundays leading up to Christmas, when we look forward to Jesus’ arrival. It began this past Sunday, for churches who mark the year this way.

I have always found it a little artificial to spend four weeks looking forward to the arrival of someone who already came — a long time ago! Why spend weeks anticipating the Messiah’s coming when we already know what happens: Why not just get to the point, fast-forward to the baby in the manger?

There are, of course, plenty of good reasons to slow down and take steps to anticipate Christ’s coming, in the lead-up to Christmas. Slowing down gives us a chance to prepare our hearts, and to set our minds remembering that the thing we celebrate is not gifts and decorations and warm family feelings, though those are lovely — but the even lovelier miracle of God pouring the fullness of his divinity into a human body, to live as one of us and eventually sacrifice himself to make us whole and restore us to him.

Yet Advent isn’t just about the past, about Jesus, God’s eternal Son, taking on human flesh and arriving as a tiny, sinless baby in Palestine, even as momentous as that moment is for all of history. Advent also points us to the future, to when Christ will come again.

When Jesus was a grown man physically living in the Near East, he said to his disciples: “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it” (Luke 17:22).  

For many people living in hard parts of the world, including Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Libya, perhaps even a place very near you, this day of longing that Jesus was pointing to may feel like now. During one round of violence in Lebanon I checked on a friend and received a text back: “We are praying to Jesus to come soon.”

In a way, many of us whose lives are intertwined with today’s Middle East are in the midst of a very elongated Advent already: much longer than four weeks, this longing for Jesus to come soon has been going on since October 7, 2023. Or since the Beirut port explosion on August 4, 2020. Or since Lebanon’s financial collapse began in 2019. Or since the Syrian civil war or the Sudanese civil war uprooted millions of lives. Or since 1967. Or since 1948. Or since 1939. You may have your own particular date when your longing for Jesus to come really increased, depending on what crises you and those close to you have experienced. Our level of longing for Christ’s return may ebb and flow with our level of distress.

Are you someone who is longing? Is someone in your family? In your community?

How do you deal with this longing? How do you bear it?

In our most recent ABTS blog post, Loulwa El Maalouf suggested two core sources of encouragement to ward off hopelessness, which I believe also help satisfy some of our longing for Jesus’ return: Being part of a community of God’s people, and being nourished and refreshed by God’s word. Perhaps through engagement with others who are also yearning for more of God, and with those who have expressed such longings in Scripture, we gain confidence that we can indeed bear it all.

Our longing is not new. The Old Testament prophets write of yearning for a day when the coming Messiah will make all things right. The psalms, too, express desperation for God to fix things: “My soul is in anguish. How long, O LORD, how long?” (Psalm 6:3).

The New Testament taps into this longing also, because YES, Jesus died to save us from our sins and reconcile us to God, and YES, his resurrection validates our salvation — he really achieved victory over sin, death, and the devil. But we are living in an in-between time when all of this has not yet been fulfilled, a time often referred to as the “last days” (Acts 2:17, Heb 1:2, 1 Peter 1:20).

The last days are these years between Christ’s two comings: between Jesus coming as a babe in the manger, growing up to teach and heal, to show us who God is, and to give himself once for all on the cross, a perfect sacrifice who opened the way to holiness (Heb 10:10, 14)….and Christ’s coming a second time, in power, to restore all things, judge wickedness, bring justice, and reign forever.

So how do we live in these in-between times — in the longing of these “last days”? And how might times of lament, of longing, of yearning contribute to our spiritual formation?

It is both helpful and unhelpful to realize that people have been longing for Christ’s return for many centuries. We may be reluctant to get our hopes up too much, since he has never before come back when people awaited him — why should we think it is any different in our day? (2 Peter 3:4, but also 8-15 show that this is not a new line of questioning.) Yet our yearning exists, and it is God-given.

Jesus himself taught that we should live in these in-between times by keeping watch for him: That although when he does come back it will be startlingly clear, “like lightning which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other” (Luke 17:24), and unpredictable: “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the Son, but only the Father” (Matt 24:36), and sudden, while people are going about normal life (Luke 17:26-36) — nevertheless, we are to “keep watch” (Matt 24:42).

And how do we keep watch? Jesus’ own teachings also offer a clue to this, asking who will be a faithful and wise servant, fulfilling his or her assigned duties to feed and care for the other servants while the master is away: “It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns” (Matt 24:45-46).

What duties has God assigned to you while Jesus is “away”? Certainly all followers of Christ share some main ones: loving God and neighbor (Mark 12:28-31) and making disciples of all nations (Matt 28:18-20; Acts 1:8). In John, Jesus made a special point of assigning one duty right in the midst of announcing that he was leaving them: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:33-36).

Jesus will be revealed one day in glory, when he returns. We, the Church, can also reveal glimpses of him in the meantime, by loving one another and by doing the things Jesus taught — including “taking up our towel and following him,” as George Sleiman’s blog post so powerfully reminded us to do, and as so many Christians have been doing for the displaced at ABTS and across Lebanon. Those of us who are not physically there to help can pray for God to sustain those who serve, to relieve their weariness, and to make their efforts fruitful. There are also ways to contribute financially to the effort.

The Lord Jesus tells us twice in Revelation 22, the final chapter of the Bible: “Behold, I am coming soon!” (Rev 22:7 and 22:12). Will we be found faithful, ready, and watching for him to appear?

In the second to last verse of the whole Bible Jesus says it a third time: “Yes, I am coming soon.”

To which the writer of Revelation responds: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

May our hearts, as well, resonate this Advent with yearning for Christ’s return:

For to us a child is born,

     to us a son is given,

     and the government will be on his shoulders,

And he will be called

     Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

     Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace

     there will be no end.

                                   — Isaiah 9:6, 7a

Sherri Ellington is the English language editor for the ABTS blog and is pursuing an M.A. in Ministry at University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. She is currently waiting and watching from Jordan for Christ to make all things right.