Come, Lord Jesus, Before the Lamps Go Out

On the longing of those who have lived long enough to see through everything

“Now dismiss Your servant, O Lord, according to Your word, in peace; for my eyes have seen Your salvation.”

Luke 2:29–30

There comes a point when the world loses its voice.

It still moves. It still shouts. It still advertises itself as urgent and important and full of promise. But something in you has gone quiet. The noise no longer convinces you. The promises no longer seduce you. You have seen too much. You have buried too many. You have watched things you thought would last dissolve into nothing.

You have watched strength turn into fragility. You have watched certainty turn into confusion. You have watched men build towers of meaning with feverish intensity, only to abandon them or watch them collapse under their own emptiness.

And you have begun to understand something terrible and holy.

None of this can hold you.

The body itself has become a teacher of this truth. It no longer obeys as it once did. It reminds you daily that you are not staying here. It whispers through pain, through fatigue, through slowness, through the quiet humiliations that come with age. The body strips you of illusions you did not know you were carrying. It dismantles the lie of permanence.

And at first this feels like loss.

But if you remain, if you do not turn away, it becomes something else.

It becomes mercy.

Because slowly, painfully, honestly, the roots of your heart begin to loosen from this world. Not in bitterness. Not in despair. But in clarity.

You begin to see that so much of what once seemed urgent was never necessary. So much of what once felt important was never essential. So much of what consumed your thoughts had no weight in eternity.

The entertainments. The arguments. The endless attempts to secure yourself inside something fragile.

It was all smoke.

And now, standing closer to the edge, you feel a longing that is almost unbearable in its purity.

You do not long for achievement.

You do not long for recognition.

You do not long for more time to construct a self.

You long for Him.

You long for the Face you have only glimpsed.

You long for the Voice that called you out of nothing.

You long for the Presence that stood beside you in every grief even when you could not feel it.

You long to be gathered.

And you long for those you have lost.

Not as memory. Not as imagination. But as living persons.

You long for the moment when separation will end. When the veil will tear. When what has been held apart will be restored.

This longing is not weakness.

It is the final honesty.

The world calls this resignation. It calls it decline. It calls it surrender.

But the fathers call it awakening.

St. Isaac the Syrian says that the one who has come to know the truth no longer clings to this life, not because he despises it, but because he has seen something greater.

He has seen the homeland.

He has begun to remember where he belongs.

This is why the aged righteous do not rage against the passing of time in the same way. They grieve, yes. They feel the tearing, yes. But beneath it there is something else.

Recognition.

They know they are being called.

Not into absence.

Into fulfillment.

Christ does not wait for you on the other side as a stranger. He waits as the One who has already carried you your entire life.

He was there when you were formed in secret.

He was there when you walked in ignorance.

He was there when you fell.

He was there when you were broken.

He was there when you buried those you loved and thought your heart would not survive.

He did not leave then.

He will not leave now.

Death is not an abandonment. It is a crossing.

The One you are going to meet is the same One who has already kept you alive through every darkness.

This is why the saints dared to say, “Come, Lord Jesus.”

Not because they hated life.

But because they had finally learned where life is.

And even now, in frailty, in exhaustion, in the quiet hours when the world has receded and only the truth remains, you can feel it.

You are being drawn.

Not violently. Not cruelly.

Faithfully.

The same God who called you into existence is calling you into completion.

Nothing you have suffered has been wasted. Nothing you have lost has been forgotten. Nothing you have loved in Him has been destroyed.

Everything is being gathered.

Everything is being prepared.

Everything is moving toward reunion.

This is why hope remains, even when strength does not.

Hope does not depend on the condition of your body.

Hope does not depend on the stability of the world.

Hope depends on Him.

And He is faithful.

The chaos of the world will not outlast Him.

The fragmentation will not outlast Him.

Death itself will not outlast Him.

He has already entered it and broken it from within.

You are not moving toward emptiness.

You are moving toward the One who has loved you from before the foundation of the world.

So even now, with trembling hands and tired eyes, the prayer rises from the deepest place in the heart.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Not as an escape.

As a homecoming.