“Are you the one I’m waiting for?” A story from a set of immigrant grandparents goes like this: On the train from Ellis Island, New York, to Wisconsin a young man from rural Sweden met a young woman from the city of Stockholm. The question seemed to pop out of the young woman’s mouth: “Are you the one I’m waiting for?” And the man who became her life-long husband of 63 years without hesitation replied, “This I know, you are the one I’m waiting for.”
“Are you the one we’re waiting for?” Thatquestion greeted a man last week who was walking up to a Duluth house to give an older couple a ride to the doctor. “You bet,” the man said. “Well, that is, if you’re the ones looking for a ride to the clinic.”
What’s the biggest “waitingfor” in your life?
The right person to bring companionship?
Someone who will help you get where you need to go?
Or is it a bigger “waiting-for” even than those?
People asked Jesus, “Are you the one?” as they suspiciously and skeptically hung around the edge of the crowd following him. When unsure if Jesus would heal, cast out troubles, send demons packing, people found ways to ask: “Are you the One?”
Theanswer Jesus gives: I Am.
I Am the bread of life. I Am the light of the world. I Am the gate. I Am the good shepherd. I Am the resurrection and the life. I Am the way, the truth, and the life. I Am the vine.
When asked directly, “Are you the one we are waiting for?” Jesus answers, “Go and tell what you have seen and heard: The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised,the poor have good news brought to them.”
It is almost Easter. Many people, those who go to church and those who don’t, when hearing of crucifixion, of Easter, of Resurrection, of sin, of forgiveness, of God, of Jesus, inwardly or out loud, ask, “Are you the One we are waiting for?”
Jesus says: I Am.
Still not sure? Let your heart and mind rest for a moment.
Notice that inner longing? It is telling you not only that you need a vacation, a better healthcare package, a bigger fish on the end of your line, a sunset to look at, a new love in your life.
It is you, asking, “Are you the
One?”
Go ahead, ask all the questions you want to ask.
Ask God, “How can all these things happen?”
Ask Jesus, “Are you the one?”
Ask yourself, “Can I keep pretending that inner longing isn’t there?”
Go ahead, ask God. “Are you the one I’m waiting for?”
May God’s Holy Spirit stir your mind to hear your heart’s response.
Perhaps your words of recognition will be like these: “My heart is longing to praise my Savior…What blessed joy overflows my spirit, because your wondrous grace to me was given.”*
* From the hymn My Heart is
Longing.
Text: Princess Eugenie
of Sweden;
translated by Peter
Sveeggen, 1881-1959. Tune:
Norwegian Folk Tune.
Each month a member of the
Cook County Ministerium will
offer Spiritual Reflections. For
March, our contributor is Pastor
Kris Garey, Trinity Lutheran,
Hovland.
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