E�RE IN THE TOES,� HE SAID. �I wonder how long we�ll be in the toes.� I suspect that only an Adventist would know what he meant. I knew immediately, even though I don�t remember hearing the words used in quite that way before.

He offered no explanation. He didn�t need to. I knew he was talking about the toes of the image in Daniel 2, the very last of the last before the great stone smashed the image and grew into a great mountain filling the whole earth, a kingdom never to be destroyed.

rom the beginning Adventist evangelists have traced God�s hand in history from Daniel 2, charting the steady march of time from Babylon down to the present. Any way you look at it, we�re in the toes�the tips of the toes, the tips of the toenails�just waiting for the Lord to come.

It�s not clear to me why this particular conversation struck home. I�ve remembered it for months now, complete with details of place�like the way we remember exactly where we were when we heard that President Kennedy had been shot.

Heading for the college, I had just crossed Larch and was walking down the hill on Fourth when I met Brother Kegley, Richard Kegley, Sr. Longtime readers of the Review may remember him as the �old� man who runs.* As I write, he�s inching up on 82, more likely to walk than run these days. We chatted only a few minutes. But that was the conversation, and those were the moments I remember.

Brother Kegley had known my folks from my hometown in Clarkston, Washington. He had attended the same church school I did, Beacon Union Junior Academy, just across the Snake River in Lewiston, Idaho. His brother, Ronald Kegley, Jr., had pastored the Clarkston church; his brother�s son, John, now an Adventist chaplain in the Air Force, was the same vintage as my brother Albert; they�d had good times together.

A lot of local and Northwest Adventist history was represented there on Fourth Street that morning. An Adventist in his 50s, headed out to teach Adventists in their teens and 20s, was talking with an Adventist in his 80s. I could see Foreman Hall jutting up through the trees, one of the �newer� campus buildings, but right next to Village Hall, formerly the Village church, where my uncle, Melvin Lukens, had served as pastor. Several decades earlier my grandfather, Walter Thompson, had pastored the Walla Walla City church.

Kegley�s father, Ronald Kegley, Sr., graduated in theology from Walla Walla College in 1927; his first church assignment was Ferdinand, Idaho. In my day that same little Ferdinand church took its turn in hosting �Associated MV� meetings.

�In 1930 I was baptized at the German church in Colville,� Brother Kegley told me. �My father bought me a new suit in honor of the occasion; it came with two pair of �knickerbocker pants� [loose-fitting short pants gathered at the knee].

�These will last you until the Lord comes,� he remembers his dad saying. And then Kegley added his own wistful commentary: �We�re in the toes. I wonder how long we�ll be in the toes.�

o if we�re in the toes�waiting�what does that mean for daily living? First, there�s some comfort in knowing that we�re in good company when we chafe at the seeming delay. In Revelation 6 the souls under the altar cry out: �How long?� Peter was writing to restless saints too when he suggested a gracious twist: the Lord is not slow, just patient; he doesn�t want anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:9).

Second, two dangers to avoid are the �frenzy� and the �fade,� the ditches on either side of the road. The frenzy comes either when we think God has a timetable for us to figure out, or when we think ending the delay is up to us. On either count the resulting frenzy is not God�s plan.

Furthermore, the frenzy often leads directly to the fade. When it becomes clear that the frenzy won�t take us where we want to go, the hope fades and we settle in to this present world as if it were an adequate substitute for a new heaven and a new earth.

The New Testament suggests a better way: steady living, steady witnessing, steady hope. Calculations won�t work. At the Ascension, when the disciples asked Jesus for a timetable, He simply said, �None of your business; just be my witnesses� (see Acts 1:7-8). To the Thessalonians Paul explained why knowing the �when� is pointless: the Lord will come like a thief in the night (1 Thess. 5:1, 2). The only way to prepare for a surprise visit is to be ready all the time (cf. Matt. 24:44; 25:13).

As I stood there chatting with Brother Kegley in this time of the toes, I felt a wave of gratitude for all the believers who have helped keep the hope alive. And Paul reminds us that �hope� is indeed the right word. Jesus� return is not something we can �see� or �prove.� �Hope that is seen is not hope,� says Paul, �but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience� (Rom. 8:24, 25, RSV).

Yes, we�re in the toes. But I�m ready for the great stone cut out without hands. So let�s follow the counsel of Hebrews 10:23-25, �not neglecting to meet together . . . but encouraging one another��even if it�s just on Fourth Street in College Place.

Postscript: Richard Kegley died in February, just weeks after I�d sent this article to the Adventist Review. We shall see him in the morning.

*See Adventist Review, Apr. 21, 1988, p. 15; Feb. 4, 1993, pp. 27, 28. Also Signs of the Times, November 1988, pp. 24-26; Life and Health, October 1984, pp. 10-13.

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Alden Thompson is a professor of Old Testament at Walla Walla College, College Place, Washington.