Here is the future, on the eve of our newest present. It is helpful to come back to this again and again, and maybe most especially on the doorstep of a new year, when we are all expectant of something, though we rarely know exactly what.
This is it. The Bride will be with her Husband. Her eyes will behold the face she has longed to see. Light will warm her features; she will feel it dawning inch by inch, over her arms and shoulders, and the warmth will be kind and healing. She will weep, with gratitude and world-weary relief, the way a mother does at the end of a long and arduous labor, at the sound of her infant shaking a wobbling yell into the fresh, honest air. Life! At the pinnacle of pain and tiredness - life. These tears may fall in torrents, even - uncontrollable. The relief may shake her like an Autumn tree. But even these tears of tired joy will be gently wiped away, and this will be the beginning of everything.
The dawn of a new time will hover over the world like a fresh garment. Clean white linen hung to dry on the Spring line, warm from wind. The earth will lift its arms and receive it; it will dawn its dress and be new.
On this New Year, O reader, and, if we have the eyes and the ears for it, on every dawn until we sleep, I wish for you this vivid remembrance, which is, paradoxically, also our expectation. God has not forgotten us. He is coming for His bride.