Seeing and Welcoming
Scripture Reading: Hebrews 11:1-2, 13-16
11 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for.
13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.
Hebrews 11:13
Hebrews 11 gives us a glance in the Bible’s rearview mirror. The faithful witnesses mentioned in this chapter lived long ago, even before Jesus came. And they had this in common: they all lived by faith in God’s promises. And before they died and were taken to live with the Lord, “They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.”
“Seeing from a distance” is how we can describe the sights, sounds, and scenes in the book of Revelation. Revelation 11 closes with a scene in which all heaven rejoices and gives thanks to God because “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah.” It is a powerful picture of God reigning on earth as in heaven. And the promise is that “he will reign for ever and ever.” Hallelujah!
With eyes of faith, we can see this “from a distance.” Close-up in the world around us, though, we often see terrible things such as cancer, COVID-19, poverty, racism, violence, addiction, and death. And there are times when these appalling things make us weep. At such times, faith is the Holy Spirit’s muscle that enables us to see “from a distance.”
Faith also welcomes the future of God’s full kingdom today. Faith has this power because it is “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done”—here today—“on earth as it is in heaven.” In Jesus’ name, Amen.
