I recently had a few days off of work, and I had planned on using them to surprise my girlfriend by showing up at her doorstep unannounced. Believe me when I say that I did pretty much everything that was in my power to keep this thing a secret. I really, really, really wanted to surprise her. And if you know much about me, I often go to great lengths to pull stuff like this off.
So I told only told the people who needed to know. I live in West Palm Beach, a whopping 848 miles from Nashville, and I didn't even tell my friends at home that I was leaving. I only talked to her parents about it, to make sure that it was gonna be all right for me to stay at their place while I visited. And since she knew my schedule, I came up with events that I "had to" be at home for during my few days off of work. She was genuinely not expecting it, which is great because she's pretty intuitive about that kind of stuff.
To make a short story shorter (and to not throw anyone under the bus), the proverbial beans were spilled the night before I showed up. Don't get me wrong, my girlfriend loved that I came and was super stoked about it, but I have yet to see her truly-surprised-face.
So a lot of you may remember Harold Camping from a few years ago. He was a man who claimed to know when Jesus was coming back. According to Harry, it was going to be on May 21, 2011. A lot of us have (hopefully) realized that he was wrong, and there was a lot of bad PR that came out of the error of that prophecy. Many Christians, in light of Camping's doomsday message, tried to remind the world that,
"concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only." (Matthew 24)
A lot of the talk during that period had to do with apocalyptic destruction and end-times tribulation. It was about the great pain that was going to be unleashed on the world in God's fiery judgment. And look, I believe all that stuff. I've been reading through Revelations - that stuff about destruction and doom is all true, and a lot of points could be made in regards to the urgency we should have as Christians in telling the Good News to the world. But that's not why I'm writing this.
I'm writing this to talk about the character of God, and one of the greatest attributes about Him is this: God is enamored with mystery. The fact that He gets to surprise us with the return of His Son at a moment when nobody thought it would happen probably makes God very, very happy. And it should do the same to us.
Just imagine, you're drinking your coffee, getting ready for the work day when BAM, you're standing before the Jesus you've struggled your whole life to get near to. Or you might be sleeping, when all of a sudden, you are immediately surrounded with the perfect rest of the presence of God. Or you might be in the middle of a battle against giving in to a great temptation, when Jesus shows up and you suddenly completely understand how he fulfills everything you were made for.
Friends, we have a great surprise coming for us. And this time, no one will be able to spill the proverbial beans.
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