Look, the LORD is leaving his place and coming down to trample the heights of the earth. Micah 1:3
A lthough she didn’t take me up on this too many times, I made a deal with my late wife when our children were young. If there was a “situation” that needed a dad’s attention discipline-wise, I was willing to drop everything, jump in the car, and drive home from the office to deal with it.
If there wasn’t the urgency of dropping everything and coming home, but the moment called for Dad’s “heft,” Bobbie would tell the girls that Dad would deal with it later. “Just wait until Daddy gets home,” she would say. This usually got their attention. Gratefully, as I said, this didn’t happen often in our house. Frankly, coming home to a defendant sitting in the dock wasn’t as fun as being able to celebrate my arrival with hugs and laughter. But sometimes the dad needs to be this kind of dad.
Come to think of it, my own mother did this a few times. Like when I got home from a date at three in the morning. Because my dad was out of town, I thought I could get away with it, but my mother was waiting up for me. Yes, I’m sure that was one of the times! And he wasn’t coming home until a few days later, so I had a lot of time to twist in the wind, waiting for him to “deal with this.”
The prophet Micah was fed up with the Jews. Their shameless sin and disobedience against God’s laws had him at the end of his ministerial rope. So he said to the people, “You just wait until your Father gets home. He’ll deal with this.” And then, just in case they might have been thinking that God was coming back wearing a coned birthday party hat, he reminded the people that when He comes, “the mountains will melt beneath him, and the valleys will split apart, like wax near a fire, like water cascading down a mountainside” (v. 4).
“Now, what are we going to do?” the people must have said to one another. “We’re in serious trouble.”
If you and I had been among the crowd that day, hopefully we would have made a suggestion. “Why don’t we clean up our act right now? Then, when our heavenly Father comes to judge us, perhaps He won’t be too harsh.”
For centuries, people have been predicting Christ’s return to earth. Sermons have been preached, best-selling books have been written, songs have been sung, and bumper stickers have been slapped on the back of cars proclaiming, “Jesus is coming soon.” And yes, Jesus is coming back someday, wearing the same visible and glorified body He left with. This truth ought to shape our daily activity. As we would’ve suggested to the Jews in Micah’s day, this ought to help us “clean up our act.”
But guess what? God’s Spirit comes to us every day. When we crawl into bed at night, we could rightly predict that “Jesus is coming back first thing tomorrow morn- ing.” And we’d be right.
Yes, Jesus is coming back to earth, but God’s “return” to His people is a daily occurrence. He comes every day. In fact, He never leaves. The thought that “our heavenly Father is going to deal with this” ought to make a difference in our conduct. And unless we’re looking forward to experiencing melting mountains and splitting valleys, doing everything we can do to avoid His heavy hand might be a good idea.