Consummation

What a word!  It has words in it, it brings other words to mind.  Consummation! 


As I was listening to a lecture from a Ligonier conference this morning, its speaker used the word.  Consummation.  It brought me back a few years ago when I made a temporal connection.  Remember the hymn The Church's One Foundation?  Well, there's a new arrangement to it now in post-modernity, but I remember it from our Lutheran Hymnal growing up.  I loved/love the original tune! Enjoy it here if you'd like.  There are more verses, but here are the first five:






The Church’s one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord,
She is His new creation
By water and the Word.
From heaven He came and sought her
To be His holy bride;
With His own blood He bought her
And for her life He died.






She is from every nation,
Yet one o’er all the earth;
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With every grace endued.






The Church shall never perish!
Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish,
Is with her to the end:
Though there be those who hate her,
And false sons in her pale,
Against both foe or traitor
She ever shall prevail.






Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed:
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song!






’Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace forevermore;
Till, with the vision glorious,
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest.






She waits the consummation....isn't that the whole of our lives?  We are always waiting for something.  We wait in line at the store, we wait for our kids to get in the car, we wait for the news of our final grade, we await the arrival of our visitors.  Military soldiers and officers "hurry up and wait."  We wait until we can be a year older, drive a car, get married, go on vacation!  We may be content for hours, days, even years, but it comes to an end so bitterly.






As Christians, we wait very IMPAITIENTLY to get married to our young loves so we can....consummate our marriage!  We think that once we can consummate our marriages EVERYTHING will be hunky dory.  Well, it is for about 2 weeks, and then normal life sets in and we are running on high octane, but the fumes cannot sustain forever.  Then we wait for something else to change. 






You see our focus is off!  God does give us marriage as a foreshadow of what is to come, but it is only a foreshadow.  Israel thought everything was PERFECT in the promised land until....well, you see it was a foreshadow of Heaven!  We await the CONSUMMATION of our being with Christ y'all! (I went ahead and said it.)  When was the last time we thirsted for Heaven, namely Christ our Lord.  He is our Bridegroom and we are his Bride.  We have the most glorious life ahead if we look to Him through our troubled souls.  Seek the Kingdom and His righteousness.   I desire to wait for Him and His kingdom and  as I waited so "impatiently" for my love on our wedding night.






Coram Deo.