Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 

1 Thessalonians 4:13-14

All week, we’ve been thinking about the interplay between hope and waiting. Because we have a firm hope that Christ will come again, we can wait paitently on the Lord. In his book, The Source of Life, Jürgen Moltmann looks at hope and waiting from a different angle and reminds us that jus as we wait on God, God also waits on us:

“But the ultimate reason for our hope is not to be found at all in what we want, wish for and wait for; the ultimate reason is that we are wanted and wished for and waited for. What is it that awaits us? Does anything await us at all, or are we alone? Whenever we base our hope on trust in the divine mystery, we feel deep down in our hearts: there is someone who is waiting for you, who is hoping for you, who believes in you. We are waited for as the prodigal son in the parable is waited for by his father. We are accepted and received, as a mother takes her children into her arms and comforts them. God is our last hope because we are God’s first love.”

As we finish up one more year of our lives here on earth and move irrevocably toward either our own deaths or Christ’s return, we do so with hope. There at the end of our lives is one who eagerly waits for us, the God who made us, the God who redeems us, and the God who keeps us still.

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