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When I was a kid the night before Christmas was the longest night in the world.

There were only one or two clocks in our house as a general rule, and eventually eight of us kids. To forestall endless repetition of the question "What time is it?" our parents loaned us one of the clocks, and many times we'd sleep in only one or two rooms, waiting together.

Each in turn would wake, and quietly, so quietly, attempt to turn the luminescent dial towards ourselves, believing it possible that we would not rouse the others. All around us was darkness. Silence reigned. So did fear. We did not dare to stir from our room, for fear of frightening Santa Claus and breaking the charm of Christmas.

And each time the clock showed that absolutely no time had passed at all. The world had come to a dead stop halfway between dusk and dawn.

Prior to that night had been weeks of dreaming and hinting. Christmas was a sure thing. There were going to be presents. Even in difficult years our parents worked miracles. The only question was -- what? What would our presents look like?

Finally the moment would come. The clock would become unstuck, the hands would swing down towards six, and our parents, bleary-eyed but game, would announce that we could see what Santa had brought us. Yes, what Paul had written was true: The night is far gone. The day is at hand.

The wonder of it all was magnificent, no question about it. The waiting would have been futile without the promise of Christmas as a reward.

But Christmas would not have been as sweet without the waiting. I'm convinced.

I knew even then that others opened their presents on Christmas Eve, but I could never understand that. Where was the fun WITHOUT that endless night of delicious waiting, knowing something good beyond measure lay beyond the dawn. I mean, you had your presents, you knew what they were, and THEN you went to sleep? Had the world gone crazy?

Had I been raised another way, of course, I'm sure I would have accepted it as normal. That's the trick, you know, understanding that everyone's background is different and delightful. Yes, you ate turkey for Christmas Day, but we had chili beans and tamales, and I wouldn't trade that for anything, and neither should you.

Once again, on the twenty-fourth day of the month, the Lord speaks through the prophet Haggai. Just like the last prophecy.
Twice in one day! Probably no one was more surprised than Haggai.

Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying, I am about to shake the heavens and the earth, and to overthrow the throne of kingdoms; I am about o destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations, and overthrow the chariots and their riders; and the horses and their riders shall fall, every one by the sword of a comrade.
-- Haggai 2:21-22

So audacious is this prophecy that there must have been some who laughed at its impossibility. Zerubbabel was no king. He was a governor of a tiny region on the edge of a province in a huge empire. He probably had no standing army, only a ceremonial guard.

Zerubbabel himself might have been nervous about all this, looking this way and that, hoping no one heard. If word of this were to get back to Darius, things could get a little sticky.
The penalty for treason is final.

And others thought of personal and political glory. The whole world was going to pay. Shake the heavens and the earth, overthrow the throne of kingdoms. Chariots and warhorses were high tech. Armies fled in disarray at the sight of these magnificent war machines.

But no human general was going to lead this army. The key phrase that the riders would fall, "everyone by the sword of the comrade," makes it clear that this is God's victory. Just as Gideon sent most of his army packing so it would be clear this was God's victory and not Gideon's, just as it was the angel and not the Israelites who killed 185,000 Assyrians in a single night, just as Paul wrote that God's strength is revealed in our weakness, so too the final victory of peace over chaos will be the work of God and not ours.

Those who waited for a king like David didn't understand what God was talking about. And they'd forgotten how flawed a David could be. The sheer weight of this victory required that someone outside the human realm accomplish what appeared to be an impossible task. That task seems no less impossible today, considering the difficulties of the world's problems.

The thought of God's kingdom bursting in on creation, of God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven, is better than any Christmas. Indeed, the first real Christmas, as glorious as it is, remains only a foretaste of the victory of God, when Jesus shall come in triumph.

Thoughts of the ending go hand in hand with meditations on the begining. It's only natural that the prophecies of Jesus about the endtime are usually read as part of the lectionary in churches the week prior to and also the first weeks of Advent.

But when?

When will it happen? How long will we wait? The night inches along, history seems to have stopped, and we know the gift of God will be overwhelming, but the fact remains that it is not here yet.

For some the most important thing is to be able to predict how long this night will last, down to the day! It is not enough to say "soon." They want to be able to set their clock.

Haggai's words, elaborated by Zechariah, Malachi, and the prophet who retold Daniel's story, make it clear God will set it all right. But other than the fact that "I am about to destroy the strength of the kingdoms," no clear timetable is set.

For some these verses are part of a great code that requires obscure interpretations to fit them into a scheme that reveals the exact dates and sequences of endtime events.

During my life the date for the end has been set many times. Throughout the early seventies books were printed that explained why the end had finally come. The years slipped by. And there was the time in 1987 that I received an almost incomprehensible book called 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988. Believe it or not, a sequel appeared a year later explaining why the author was only slightly off.

There is a growing realization, however, that a calendar interpretation of the apocalyptic literature is neither consistent with the intent of scripture, nor in the least bit useful.

The real message of these passages, written to those of us who live in tough times, is HOLD ON! Please. Hold on just a little longer. The night is far gone. The day is at hand. You can make it.

In the meantime, we have to remain alert. Students cram for tests because they know when the end of the term is approaching. They could have studied steadily all semester and been ready at any time to take the exam.

Because we don't know the end of God's term, we have to be ready for the test always.

Jesus warned his apostles in strong language: "Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, 'I am he!' and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs" (Mark 13:5-8).

One thing is certain: "But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (Mark 13:32). This is a literal statement that many literalists ignore!

If Haggai expected God's kingdom to happen in his lifetime, then he was wrong. But no more wrong than Jesus, who said one of the most puzzling things in the scriptures: "Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place" (Mark 13:30).

C. S. Lewis once wrote that this statement of Jesus must be correct because no one would have put these words into his mouth when on the surface it looks as if Jesus was wrong.

But as Lewis also pointed out, this statement proved that God did not cheat when it came to the incarnation. While fully God and in control of the universe, he was also fully human and shared our frailties.

I think the real problem is that none of us really understands the nature of divine time. We speak of eternity, but assume that heaven runs on Eastern Standard Time. It's true. There's an unspoken assumption that God and the redeemed of the Lord are watching the earth.

God is not bounded by linear time. Eternity probably contains all moments. All time is accessible from that one point.

I liken God's perspective to a film reel. If we hold the reel in our hand we can turn to any frame and see what is happening. Moreover, in our view the die is cast. We know what has and will take place.

But the people in the movie still have free will. They will travel from one film cell to another, making choices, and bound to touch all the bases before coming home.

In like fashion we travel from one second to the next. As Shakespeare wrote in his sixtieth sonnet:

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before ...

Or even better, as Macbeth, in the play of that title, says:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.

We are prisoners of linear time. Although space and time are part of the same fabric in our universe, we cannot travel freely in time as we can in space. We live each moment in succession, remember as best we are able what occurred in the past, while pressing forward into the future at the rate of sixty seconds every minute and sixty minutes every hour.

Our mistake is to insist that God experiences time in the same fashion.

My favorite illustration of how God's time differs from ours is contained in the twelfth chapter of Revelation. Just as Haggai, in 2:21, looks ahead to when God will shake the heavens and the earth, so this final book of the Bible describes in even greater detail what may be expected. But it does this with images that are not intended to be translated into chronological sequences.

The twelfth chapter of Revelation introduces the woman clothed with the sun, who seems to be a combination of Mary, the nation of Israel, and the church. She is in great labor, and about to give birth to the child who will rule all the nations, reminiscent of the prophecy in Haggai. But the great red dragon, who we are told later is called both the Devil and Satan (Revelation 12:9), waits to devour her child even as he is about to be born.

However, in what seems to be a re-enactment of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the child, upon being born, is carried up to the throne of God, while the woman, who may now represent the early Christian church which abandoned Jerusalem before its destruction, flees to the desert.

"Now war arose in heaven," reads Revelation 12:7. Michael is on one side and the dragon is on the earth, and the dragon "was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him" (Revelation 12:9).

Is something wrong here? The timing of the events seems askew. Satan and his angels are thrown out of heaven after the birth of Jesus in this story. When DID the fall of Lucifer occur? Was it in ages past, before the dawn of time on earth? These passages ...

How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, "I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit on the mount of assembly on the heights of Zaphon;
I will ascend to the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High." -- Isaiah 14:12-14

and:

Moreover the word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord GOD: You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, carnelian, chrysolite, and moonstone, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald; and worked in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared.

With an anointed cherub as guardian I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked among the stones of fire.
You were blameless in your ways from the day that you were created, until iniquity was found in you.
In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and the guardian cherub drove you out from among the stones of fire. Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you. -- Ezekiel 28:11-17


... are thought by some to include, as a secondary meaning at the very least, descriptions of the fall of the brightest of angels in the dim and distant past.

And Jesus himself said, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven" (Luke 10:19). This was in the middle of his ministry. Yet John quotes Jesus, not long before the crucifixion, as saying, "Now is the judgment of the world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out...." That's towards the end of the ministry.

The question of when Satan was cast from heaven is meaningless in chronological terms. If it happened in eternity the event can be described from the perspective of the past, the present, and the future with equal accuracy.

Also meaningless is any question of when God's kingdom is installed, and on what day we shall see the Lord return in glory. When we ask if Haggai was wrong, when we whisper the question, "Was Jesus wrong?" the answer is, of course, no. The events of eternity will happen at their own pace, have already happened, will happen, are happening.

Make no mistake. Christmas is coming. Big time.

In the meantime, what is to be our attitude? How are we to live this long Advent?

For one thing, we are to remember God's promise to make Zerubbabel "like a signet ring." In the days before ballpoint pens, signatures were often affixed in hot wax with one-of-a-kind signets. These emblems would be rolled in the wax, leaving behind the official mark of the king or another high official. Whether worn on the hand as a ring, or around the neck on a string, these were as important as credit cards in establishing identity.

We are God's signet ring. We are the proof of his presence on earth. We are not God. We are not worthy. Yet God wants us to to be the image of his presence through our ministries. In this way people will know that God has set his seal of approval upon the good works done in his name.

"I will take you," said God to Zerubbabel, and by extension, to us as well, "for I have chosen you." The Hebrew word for "take" resembles the term used for the manner in which God took both Enoch and Elijah, bypassing death into LIFE. Just like the genie said to Aladdin in the Disney movie, "You ain't never had a friend like me!"

As David wrote in the twenty-third psalm, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life!" And to help sustain us during times of trouble, during those long nights of waiting, he also wrote, "He leadeth me beside the still waters."

Professor Graydon Snyder of the Chicago Theological Seminary used a striking illustration during the sermon he preached at my installation service at the Elkhart Valley Church of the Brethren. He reminded us that still waters are stagnant waters, polluted waters, difficult waters. God is the shepherd who leads us by these waters, which are not fit to drink, and takes us to greener pastures and swiftly moving streams. There are many times in our lives when we find ourselves by stagnant waters, yet the promise made by Haggai to Zerubbabel is as true for us. God will win our victories for us.

The ultimate apocalyptic imperative is the same advice we might give to someone who is in danger of freezing to death: "Stay awake and keep moving!" The people in Haggai's time were suffering from a deep spiritual malaise. They had been full of a dream to rebuild God's kingdom on earth, yet eighteen years went by and they hadn't built the Temple. This funk was affecting everything, from the economy to the climate and the crops.

Haggai told the people to get up and do something. Build the temple. See what happens. We do not believe we are saved by works. Yet there's no question that it's hard for us to believe while lying on our backs and moping. We are God's people, wearing God's mark for all the world to see. Get up and do something to build his kingdom. His grace saves you, not your works, but it is surprising how works can help you say, "I believe," by making you look beyond yourself to something greater. You can see the communion of saints when you work among them. You can live in God's kingdom by building. And you will know, by extension, the dreamer when you share the dream.

I wonder what Haggai thought, after receiving two prophecies in one day. Did he wonder if this were only the beginning, if God might start talking through him three, four, five times a day? Like the rookie who hits a couple of singles or a home run in his first game. Does Haggai imagine this will happen again and again and again?

Some only get one trip to the major leagues. That's not bad. Most of us don't get a shot at all. Regardless of what Haggai thought, this was his high-water mark. There are no more recorded prophecies attached to his name. Was he disappointed? Did he look back to that golden age, so very short, and say to his grandchildren, "You should have seen me when"?

Or maybe he realized that the arrival of God's spirit is a gift. We too may be infused with holy joy for a moment or an hour. We can't repeat the sensation on cue and we shouldn't try. Like bolts of lightning or gentle breezes, God moves among his people, making his presence felt or known. Success as the world judges is no standard by which to mark our faithfulness. God may speak through us once or throughout a lifetime. Rest assured it has nothing to do with our own worthiness. Nor should it be a cause for resentment when God chooses others to be his instruments.

Haggai was called to serve God as prophet for a short time, but he was called to be a disciple all the days of his life. So are we. Whether we are shepherds, drawn to the manger by the singing of angels, or magi called by the sign of a star, our task is the same, to draw attention not to ourselves, but to the king, now an infant lying in a manger, but soon and very soon, the glorious king and redeemer of the world.

So come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant. Join Haggai at the foundation of the temple. Sweat a little. Sing a little. Keep your feet on the ground. Set and accomplish the small goals.

You're building the kingdom. The real kingdom. The eternal kingdom. A brick at a time.

So the elders of the Jews built and prospered, through the prophesying of the prophet Haggai and Zechariah son of Iddo. They finished their building by command of the God of Israel and by decree of Cyrus, Darius, and King Artaxerxes of Persia; and this house was finished on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of King Darius. The people of Israel, the priests and the Levites, and the rest of the returned exiles, celebrated the dedication of this house of God with joy. -- Ezra 6:14-16