Isn’t she outside? (A Nessie the Wonder Dog Story)

Hope is inevitably coming. What joy that will be!

Nessie the Wonder Dog likes having all her people present. This is possible since two have moved out, though she remembers. Nothing is better for the Wonder Dog than when the missing people return for a visit. Hope and I can only agree!

If Hope is gone, the central figure in her life, then she becomes restless. Any sound outside, and our urban-by-choice neighborhood has many sounds, and Nessie will run to her window. She stands at attention waiting, knowing that Hope will return. Hope always comes back. If I call Hope on speaker phone, Nessie goes a bit mad, she assumes that Hope is in the garden and goes to the window to look, but Hope is not there. She is speaking, but not present.

So it goes with all of us and our blessed hope.

We know that the fulfillment of every hope is coming, but not yet. We hear of that hope in every Sunday liturgy. We run and look. Is this the day?

Yes.

Every Sunday is an image of that final Day when hope will be seen and our rational faith will transform to certainty.

We are not like Nessie, cannot be, in one respect. The gift of reason has left us able to doubt that all will be well. We have thought we have heard wisdom calling on the street, gone to look, and seen nothing. Our hope is disappointed. Adulthood might be described as learning loss: some people will not come this Christmas, will not come until the end of time. We hope, we have reason for faith, that Wisdom exists. The Lord Jesus will return and we will dwell with Wisdom, imaged in the Mother of God, forever in His beloved Kingdom.

That is so good, so joyous, that even our good reasons are not enough to fully satisfy us. The Wonder Dog, being just a beast, can only assume Hope will come home. We know enough to have niggling doubts, have seen enough to get what might happen. What of the greater hope? We look. We wait. Can that sound, that happening out there, be a sign of Kingdom Come?

Yes.

The signs are there. They are always there. How do we know? Jesus is coming soon. If you can read this, He will come to you in one hundred years, probably many fewer. These are the end of days for us all. We will catch a breath, hear a trumpet sound, and then come to the timeless Second Coming of Christ.

A few will live in the end of all days. They will hear hopeful sounds, Wisdom’s voice, and the end will come for all time for all people in all places. We will go to a home where everyone is always there and there will no separation. Time will be no more. The joy of worship is the hope that this is that Day or in hope of our own smaller day being good. Meet us Wisdom, blessed Hope, now and at the hour of our death.

Hope is coming, believe it or not. What joy that is.