Sweet Anticipation

Spring Youth Harvest 2011

Sweet Anticipation
by Paul Walerczak

I can honestly say it has been brutal watching my fellow MISSION pro-staff whacking thunder chickens left and right while I patiently wait for opening day in my neck of the woods.  The toms are gobblin' their heads off in the morning and strutting their tail fans off all day long on the properties we are blessed to hunt.  All I can do is patiently wait and observe from a distance, wishing I could get in the game.  In the meantime my fellow MISSION pro-staffers are racking up notches on their belts and tally marks on their guns.  I'm not bitter (well maybe a little). I am just ready to get these season started and the sweet anticipation is about to get the best of me.   

Lord willing this Saturday morning will find me in a ground blind with my two oldest children nestled up within ear shot of some unsuspecting roosted toms.  We will whisper sweet nothings in ol' tom's ear and maybe, just maybe, we can pull off a double on youth weekend down in the bluegrass state of Kentucky.  Forget about a national championship in basketball, I am more interested in the long beards that roam the hillsides and hollers of "my old Kentucky home".  We have done all we can do in preparation, now it is in the Lord hands! 

I often wonder how many of us get this excited about the sweet anticipation toward the return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?  To be honest I find myself longing for His return more and more with each passing day.  Don't get me wrong I love my family, church, the outdoors, and all that my creator allows me to be involved in.  I just long for the day when I am blessed see Him face to face.  By His grace, I long to hear the words "Well done good and faithful servant".  What a day that will be when the sting of death will be experienced no more, and the weight of sin will be but a fleeting thought at best.  Until then I will simply live in the sweet anticipation of meeting my Savior at His return or when I die and leave this world.  Between now and then I will live in sweet anticipation and continually echo the words of John  in the closing words of the Bible, "even so come Lord Jesus come, AMEN".

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