“Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh” (James 5:8).

Many of us have been looking for the return of the Lord Jesus for a long time. The writer has kept a simple little plaque on his office wall for over 50 years. It reads: “Perhaps today,” and serves as a daily reminder that today might indeed be the day when He comes again. We do long for His appearing, and as things seem to grow worse in the world year by year, it is easy to become impatient—or perhaps even despondent—when He doesn’t come.

Yet day by day “the coming of the Lord draweth nigh!” as our text teaches. “For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry” (Hebrews 10:36,37).

Even the first-century Christians had to learn patience as they also anxiously were awaiting Christ’s return to deliver them out of their tribulations—tribulations which were so great they seemed to fit “end-time prophecies.”

“Occupy till I come” (Luke 19:13) is His admonition to all who await His second coming. “Blessed is that servant, whom his Lord when He cometh shall find so doing” (Luke 12:43). But rather than hoping the Lord will come quickly to free us from our tribulations, we should “count it all joy when (we) fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of (our) faith worketh patience” (James 1:2,3). We need patience, and “tribulation worketh patience” (Romans 5:3). For God will render “to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life” (Romans 2:7). We should “be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Hebrews 6:12). “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord” (James 5:7). HMM