A Word in Season: We’ll Meet Again (John 16:22)

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You may have heard of a classic Second World War song sung by Dame Vera Lynn, a feel -good favourite that goes, we'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again, one sunny day.

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And you can imagine the expectation that that might have given birth to in the hearts of those who heard it or sang it, the hope that it engendered that perhaps things would work out well in the end.

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But it was, after all, a possibility and not a certainty. If you or I were to leave our homes and say goodbye to our wife and children and say, don't worry,

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I'll see you again soon, I'll be back before long, then it is a hope, it's a possibility, it's not a guarantee,

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I can't be sure that I will return. Perhaps you know the distance from a friend, you're in a different part of the country or a different part of the world and you'd love to see one another face to face and you're looking forward to the day when the promise that you last made,

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I'll see you again at some time or I'll see you soon, is going to be realised. But when will that be?

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You don't know. Will it be? You hope so, but you don't know so. When our

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Lord Jesus Christ tells his people that they will meet again, he speaks with absolute certainty.

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In John chapter 16, he troubled and confused the disciples at first because he said to them, a little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me.

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And they wondered what he was talking about. He explained to them that they were going to have sorrow in the short term, but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice and your joy no one will take from you.

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Now what did our Lord mean by that? Well, for these disciples, it may be that he had first reference to his death and resurrection, that he was going to be taken from them and that they would not see him.

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He was going to be hung on the cross and then laid in the tomb. But after three days he would rise again from the dead and their hearts would rejoice when they saw him and believed and they would rejoice with the joy which no one would take from them.

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And so the fact that Christ, though he died, rose again from the dead is a joy to those disciples and to us.

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It's possible too that that promise echoes further out because it is by the

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Spirit that Christ still comes and dwells with his people. It is by his Spirit poured out and the

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Spirit's ministry in our hearts, the taking up of residence in our souls, the temple of the

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Holy Spirit, so that we know that Christ is present with his people even to the end of the age.

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And perhaps it points even further ahead and this is the sense in which many of us can so easily and so readily take it, that we have

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Christ set before us in the scriptures, but he is no longer with us in the flesh.

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He has ascended to the right hand of his Father on heaven where he sits waiting until his enemies are made his footstool.

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And there will come a day when we will see him again. Even now we have sorrow because we are pilgrims in this world.

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It's a dangerous environment. There are many griefs and pains. We battle against temptations and sins within and against persecutions without.

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And yet our joy is coming because the Lord Jesus Christ will return and we will see him and our hearts will rejoice and our joy no one will be able to take from us.

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Now there's a sense in which we've already got the first fruits of that joy because the Holy Spirit is within us.

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We have that guarantee of the inheritance, the joys that we have because our Christ is risen, the joys that we know because the

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Lord has triumphed over sin and death and hell. Those are real, but they're also sometimes undermined or tempered by the griefs and the sorrows of life in this world.

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No one can take them from us, but they're not perhaps yet as pure and as full as they will one day be when we see

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Christ Jesus with eyes of flesh and not just eyes of faith. So let us now fix our eyes with faith upon our risen

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Lord Jesus Christ that we may have joy and let us in faith anticipate the day when faith shall be sight, when we will meet again, when we will see him and he will see us and our heart will rejoice and the joys of that day no one will ever take from us.