My favorite lines about Christ’s “Second Coming” are in the story “A Christmas Memory,” by Truman Capote.

In this autobiographical piece of great delicacy, the author describes his last Christmas with the woman who brought him up. The author is seven at the time; she is in her sixties, a childlike soul radiant with inner beauty. They are each other’s best friends.

On Christmas Day, the two of them are lying in the grass, flying the kites they made as presents for each other. Suddenly, the old woman experiences a moment of mystic insight…

She admits that formerly she had imagined Christ at the Second Coming shining like windows in a Baptist church, sunlight pouring through the colored glass. But now she realizes with utter surprise and delight that what she has always seen–what we always see all around us–is Christ in glory, here and now.

from Deeper than Words