Like a Bride

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This morning I woke up with the refrain of a contemporary Christian song running through my mind. The song is by Kristian Stanfill and is called “Even So, Come.” The part that I kept hearing over and over in my mind was this: “Like a bride waiting for her groom / We'll be a Church ready for You / Every heart longing for our King / We sing / Even so come / Lord Jesus, come.”  As I was getting ready for school today, I started humming this song and thinking about it intently. How much like a bride are we as the Church? Are we really intent on looking for Christ to come? Are we really longing for our King—or do we even recognize Him as being King? Are we playing the game of church, or do we really want Him to be the center of everything we do in this life?

I’ve thought a lot this summer about the idea of being a bride because that is the simile the Bible presents to us over and over again. As we wait for the return of Jesus Christ for his Church—His bride—we are to be in a state of readiness for His imminent return.  I think that one reason Americans struggle with understanding this is because we don’t have the cultural understanding of what it means to be a bride in the Jewish tradition. A father of a Jewish man would make arrangements for him to marry—first, a bride would be selected and the arrangements would be discussed by the families of the two parties; then, a contract would be written; then a bride price would be paid; afterwards, the couple is considered betrothed, and the bride would essentially wait in a constant state of readiness while the groom prepares a place to dwell; when he shows up unannounced to carry her off, the wedding celebration really begins in earnest. We have so totally focused as a culture on the bride (the Church) instead of the groom (Christ) that the message the Bible contains for us gets watered down if not just plain lost.


This morning after thinking about this while rushing around to get ready for school, I cranked my car only to hear K-Love playing this song at the exact point I had been considering. I can’t help but think that it was there as a reminder for me to maintain my eagerness for Christ to come back and maintain my readiness for that to happen. Even so, come. Lord Jesus, come!

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