Already, but not yet.

Snow on Christmas Eve. Big white, fluffy flakes that I wait for all year. And then it happens. (Along with a glossy coating of ice for good measure, to make sure that 4x drive still works just fine.) Cascading down around my shoulders until a childlike breathless wonderment takes over. That’s what those little downy flakes do to me. Every time. I suddenly turn in to some romanticizing fool who seems to think that even the tiniest indistinguishable flake somehow makes the whole world a little more incredible. A little more intense and passionate.

As I drove through that light Christmas Eve snow in a kind of quiet fascination, I started to think about how the whole earth is waiting in expectation for the return of Christ. Romans 8 tells us that all of creation is literally groaning and crying out for Him to return. To restore and renew all that sin has devastated. To make the truth of the hope we have complete. It’s wonderful and exhilarating and real to me more at Christmas than any other time of the year.

Christmas songs and traditions and scripture make it easy to think about that hope coming to earth as a baby and dying a humiliating death for the prideful sin that cast this world into darkness and futility. That hope that’s returning to restore us with a lavish inheritance to be made perfect in Him. Truth. Full circle and glorious.

Already, but not yet.

Though it’s easier for me to see at Christmas, all of creation is groaning every day. Constantly. Which I don’t often think about unless prompted by some outside influence. It’s not that the world wakes up every morning with an intense longing that it’s never felt before. It’s so easy to think of the sunrise as bringing something new each day. But this yearning never changes. Every second of every day, every tree, flower, shrub, piece of bark, blade of grass and tender ivory snowflake is groaning with an unimaginable intensity for the Lord of the universe to return and restore the perfection of His creation. It never stops. We see it in the wilting of colorful bouquets of wildflowers, the turning of the autumn leaves and in the chestnut acorns that fall off aged oak trees. And we see it in ourselves.

Our very bodies cry out of return of our King. Our Restorer. They (we) long for a day of no more striving, no more growing old, no more growing weary. This expectation is so easy to breathe in and out at Christmas, as we relive the story of our Savior coming as a baby to a broken and needy earth. The whole world leapt for joy with the angels when it recognized its Savior. Its Messiah. Its Emmanuel. Why is it so easy to take for granted once the new year begins?

Which brings me back to my thoughts driving home through that placid blanket of fluffy white reminders. Every aspect of this world cries out for a hope which it knows is sure to be fulfilled on the day when the skies part and Christ returns in glory. How much more should we live lives that eagerly point to and await that day?! How much more should His return consume our thoughts every day, just as it consumes everything around us?!

And it’s always those delicate white flakes that bring me back to the reality of the hope which I have. And the hope to which I cling. That day when we can stop groaning in expectation and fully receive the glorious restoration of our Lord and King! I can’t wait to see the snowflakes that fall after that day...