Starting December 3rd, The Foundry Community will be joining churches and individuals through a time of anticipation and waiting. This Advent season, we will be following the lectionary daily readings though Long-Expected Jesus: An Advent Devotional. This devotional features reflections by Foundry Community writers including Jeren Rowell, Carla Sunberg, Brit Bolerjack, Michael Palmer, Deanna Hayden, Jake Edwards, Tim Gaines and more.  We will be posting additional information on how you can participate in this community experience next week (either as an individual or in a group) and we will also make the reading plan available on the blog in November. During the month of December we will post additional content, videos, and reflections to encourage community discussion through the Advent season.

We look forward to sharing this time with all of you! Here is a sneak peek of a devotional reflection from Long-Expected Jesus, written by author and blogger, Shawn Smucker.

IN THE LAST DAYS

Even in my earliest memories of her, my grandmother was vocal about her wait for the return of Jesus. She had already lived through the Great Depression, World War II, and Vietnam. She raised eight children and experienced the kind of subsistence living common among poor farmers’ wives in the middle of the twentieth century. By the time I got to know her in the 1980s, she was in her late sixties. Her husband, my grandfather, had passed away, her life had become very simple, and she had settled into a pattern of waiting that would characterize her life for the next thirty years. She was a little tired, a little worn, and ready for Jesus to come back for her.

I remember running into her house in between games of tag with my cousins, and there she always sat, rocking ever so slightly in her chair, binding the edges of a quilt. She had grown up Amish and, even after leaving that community, still wore a covering for the rest of her life. When she came to the edge of her thread, she gathered a new length, pressing it between her lips. She slipped it through the needle’s eye, and then she began to sew again, the needle flashing and clacking against the thimble on her finger.

She often sang quietly,

What a day that will be,
when my Jesus I shall see,
and I look upon his face,
the One who saved me by his grace.
When he takes me by the hand,
and leads me through the Promised Land,
what a day, glorious day that will be.

She never stopped talking about the last days. Whether it was at the dinner table over roast and potatoes, or out on her porch on a hot summer day shucking corn, her mind constantly came back around to that central hope, that pivotal moment she awaited. She often commented on the strangeness of the times, and when she did, I knew she hoped that her wait was almost over.

On one particular July 4, my cousins and I climbed up on the roof of her house to watch the fireworks. I lay there, the gritty shingles rough under my bare back, scared to death I’d slip off the roof and fall to my death, surrounded by marigolds and petunias. I stared straight up at the fireworks, their explosions reverberating against my tiny ribcage. But always, between the launch and the firework, there was that anticipatory moment of silent waiting. And I thought about my grandmother and wondered what the last days would be like. It frightened me to think about everything I knew and loved coming to an end. I felt very small in those moments, and life seemed tenuous.

As I get older, though, my attitude toward the last days has changed quite a bit. I’m beginning to understand the earnest waiting and expectant attitude my grandmother exhibited. As I witness the drawn-out deaths of people I love, the steady erosions accomplished by age and disappointment, or the horrors that plague our world, I cannot help but feel this strong desire take root inside of me—a desire to see the last days as Micah described them the third and fourth verses of the fourth chapter:

“They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
4 Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
for the Lord Almighty has spoken.”

Can we even begin to imagine this kind of universe, where worldly power is upended, where war is extinct, where nations no longer prepare for battle but instead seek the mountain of the Lord? Can we even begin to imagine a world where no one is afraid?

These, I think, were the last days my grandmother awaited. She saw a granddaughter die and the resulting pain experienced by her children. She knew the heartache of rebellious offspring. She knew just how lonely a cold winter night could be.

Only a few years ago, my grandmother sat in her armchair, surrounded by her eight children and each of their spouses, her thirty grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren as well. She lay quietly, her mouth slightly open, barely able to talk. But every so often, she whisper that she wanted us all to sing, and sing we did, some of us with tears running down our cheeks.

What a day that will be,
when my Jesus I shall see,
and I look upon his face,
the One who saved me by his grace.
When he takes me by the hand,
and leads me through the Promised Land,
what a day, glorious day that will be.

I think she was surprised to be dying before witnessing those final days here on earth. I think she always expected to see Jesus’s return during her mortal life, to see some miraculous parting of the clouds, to finally hear the trumpet she had heard so much about.

But what we saw happen during that week was no less miraculous. Any swords she carried were beaten into plowshares. Any spears that had been wielded against her in this life were bent into fruitful pruning hooks. In the end, she sat under her own tree of descendants, and she was no longer afraid. In the end, she went up to the mountain of the Lord, the highest of mountains, the one exalted above all other hills.

Strangely enough, when she died, I was not left with an overwhelming sense of loss. Instead, her passing reminded me of the final victory over all things that is yet to come. Now, every Advent season, I think of my grandmother, of her ability to wait patiently for so many years, and I try to do the same.

Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.

For pastor’s we also offer a Pastor’s Resource and devotional book bundles for church communities.