Lead Me Where

You know the songs- praise and worship melodies whose choruses contain some line about Jesus coming back. Come, Lord Jesus, come. Lord, rend the heavens and come down. Those kinds of songs.

I have always had a hard time with those songs, a hard time standing in church, in chapel, and meaning the words that I am singing. In fact, sometimes, when a song begins to beg Jesus to come, to return to Earth for a second time, I suddenly become aware that I’m no longer singing along, my lips have fallen silent and I’m no longer praising God with my voice.

Because the thought of Jesus coming back kind of freaks me out.

As I thought about it, a couple possible reasons for my anxiety over Jesus’ eventual and inevitable return occurred to me. A large part of my general hesitance to beg Jesus to return is what is eloquently referred to as The Fear of the Lord. I mean, think about it: He’s GOD, for goodness’ sake. And what am I compared to that? A speck of a speck of a piece of dust.

So, yeah. I was fearful. Awed. Intimidated.

Secondly, the thought of His immanent return makes me want to run around and do stuff. What stuff, I’m not sure, but there is so much yet to accomplish in the world. There are people to care for and children to feed and love and millions of souls who have not heard the Gospel and wait, Lord! Just give us a second to get on top of things!

But this morning, the faces of yesterday’s Care Point children still fresh in my mind, and memories of the injured, the sick, the dead still bouncing around in my heart, I told God I wanted Him to come back.

Because this world is broken, hurting, sick, dying. I knew that before I came to Kenya, and I know even better now. And yes, things are being done, but we’re certainly not on the fast track to improvement. There are problems, issues, and heartaches in this world that will not be fixed this side of Heaven. Jesus Christ is the only one capable of fixing, solving, healing.

So come, Jesus, come.

~Natalia