Have you ever watched a child participating in “The Marshmallow Test”? During this test, a sweet treat is placed in front of the child, and the child is told that they can get an additional treat if they can wait a few minutes before eating the first treat. It is so hard to wait! Some children eat the treat as soon as the adult leaves the room, others dip their head down to smell it while they wait, and others cover their eyes to try to help resist the temptation. Participants say that the test is an exercise in patience, obedience, and delayed gratification. But all children agree that it is very hard to wait!

God’s people had to wait a long time for Jesus to be born. When Adam and Eve committed the first sin, they were promised that one day, a Savior would come and rescue them from this big problem of sin. But they had to wait! In fact, they had to wait thousands of years for this promise to be fulfilled. It must have been so hard to wait!

On the first Christmas, the time had come. The wait was over! The words are very clear. God sent his Son, who, born of a woman, is both God and human. As a man, Jesus needed to do the one thing that no other person has ever been able to do—he needed to keep all of God’s commands perfectly. Jesus could never sin, never give in to the temptations of this world. And Jesus won that battle against sin for us!

Jesus passed the “marshmallow test”, and so much more. Not only did Jesus live a perfect life, but he also allowed himself to be punished in our place. The punishment that WE deserve was served to Jesus. The sins that WE have committed were placed on Jesus, and yet HIS righteousness (being “right with God”), his purity, have been credited to us. And now God has adopted us as his children, blameless in his sight because of the work of Jesus. Our inheritance, freely given by God through Jesus, is eternal life in heaven.

And now we wait! God’s promise to Adam and Eve has been fulfilled, and now we wait for the fulfillment of his promise to bring us to him in heaven. We don’t know how long we will be on this earth, and we don’t know when Jesus will come again. But we DO know that God will keep his promise to bring us to our new home in heaven. And while we wait, we have work to do! We can show our love for God by continuing to study his Word in the Bible and by sharing the joy of God’s promises with others.