Matthew 6:9-10 — After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Every time I read or hear this I am immediately transported back to second grade.  Each morning before class we said the Lord’s Prayer and the Pledge to the American Flag.  At some point in the year, though, we stopped saying the Lord’s Prayer.  There was no explanation, we just sort of … stopped.  I was seven years old, 1961.

As I look back over these many years since then, that “Kingdom” we prayed about … I long for it to come.  I truly do.  

The problem with living so long, especially in our Country, is that you can remember a lot.  The changes that have occurred over these many years of my life stand out with glaring emphasis.  But, it’s not just in relation to our Country — it’s in relation to the whole world.  

The advances in technology are beyond mind-blowing.  The rotary phone that I grew up with, for example, now sits in my pocket.  And it’s not just a phone.  It’s a camera with a gazillion megapixels.  It’s a video camera too. It sends “letters” commonly called Texts.  It comes with a calculator the likes of which cost my father-in-law over $200.00 when calculators came out with full functionality.  It holds thousands of songs and you can download a free equalizer that when hooked up to the stereo speaker system on the computer sounds incredible.  (Computers! That’s another subject.)  This crazy iPhone does just about … everything and anything.  

So much has accelerated in such a short amount of time.  We no longer live in a localized environment like what I grew up in.  The whole world has become our localized information environment.  Back “in my day” you actually had to wait for a newspaper to arrive at your door or watch the Six O’clock Nightly News to find out what was going on.  There was a time-lag to our information.  Now, it’s instantaneous.  You can look at your phone and see something that is happening in real time just about anywhere in the world.  

No big deal you say.

I think it is.

Humanity is getting “too big for it’s britches.”  We’ve out grown our need for God. We don’t need Him in our life.  We don’t need Him in our society.  We don’t need Him … period!  Heck, we don’t even need to find out what it is He might possibly expect of us.  God isn’t just “dead” — He’s worse than dead:  He’s IRRELEVANT.  

All that to say this.

I long for His Kingdom to come … soon.  And I don’t think it’s just me either.  There seems to be an expectant atmosphere among God’s people that things are winding down.  Something seems to be “in the air.”  It’s not just the wack-jobs either.  “Normal” Christians across the board are sensing that something is up.

It has to be this way prior to our Saviour’s return.  The Bride has to be expecting the Bridegroom.  A bride waiting to get married to the man she loves isn’t ho-hum about the approaching union that will take place.  As the time draws closer there is an exciting exception that grows until … they are one.  That’s just plain ‘ole normal.  

It’s the same in relation to the coming marriage of Yeshua and His Bride.  The inner longings within the Bride get increasingly stirred up.  That can’t be explained or planned.  It just happens.  The approach of the marriage creates the arousal of these feelings of expectation.  I think this might be happening to God’s people now.  Exciting, isn’t it?

I’m ready to say “I Do.”

How about you?