“The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.” Jesus was now into the meat of his discussion with the Samaritan woman. And he wasn’t finished challenging everything the woman knew about worship. She probably knew the Law very well, even if she didn’t obey it. But Jesus was telling her that she really had no idea what worship was about. “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here (emphasis mine), when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” The woman understood that Jesus was talking about the Messiah. But she did not yet understand that she had to wait no longer; Messiah was the very man speaking to her at that moment.
On Sunday, we’ll begin a time of preparation. It is a time in which we look at ourselves reflectively and wait on the coming of the Christ child. We will wait expectantly, just as Israel did for so long, just as so many continue to wait. But, the good news is that, as children of God, we wait with a different kind of expectation. We know Christ has come once, and we’ll remember his first coming this Advent season. But, we also wait expectantly for his second coming. We wait with hope. We wait with peace. We wait with joy. We wait with love.
Impacting the Kingdom Through Worship,
