Many Jerusalem residents believe not only that the Messiah will return, but that his arrival is imminent – so imminent they have taken legal precautions to ensure they can return to Jerusalem immediately upon his return.

In apartment contracts around the city, there are clauses stipulating what will happen to the apartment if or when the Jewish Messiah, or mashiach, comes. The owners, generally religious Jews living abroad, are concerned that he will arrive, build a third temple, and turn Israel into paradise – and they will be stuck waiting for their apartment tenants' contracts to run out before they can move back.

It is prophesied in the Jewish scriptures that there will be no more war, murder, or theft, the Jerusalem Temple will be rebuilt (all that remains today is the Western Wall), and all the Jews will return to the land of Israel upon his arrival. This period is known as Olam Haba, or the World to Come.

Because rental contracts are handled privately, rather than by the municipality, there is no count of how many leases in Jerusalem contain such a clause. But although not standard, the Messiah clause is requested enough that every Jerusalem property manager and real estate lawyer contacted by The Christian Science Monitor had heard of it, and all except one had dealt with it firsthand.

Joshua Portman, a Jerusalem-based lawyer, wrote it into a contract for one of his clients, though he says it's not part of his standard lease. Sarah Eiferman, a real estate agent and owner of Eiferman Properties, has had three clients in her career make this unique request. These clauses were relatively lax, giving tenants two to three months to vacate the property, so potential renters voiced no opposition in any of the cases.

But some contracts are less relaxed. Tikvah Blaukopf Schein was told she and her husband would have to vacate their apartment in a week if the Messiah arrived when they moved in last August. A difficult negotiation ensued when she decided to take the clause seriously and wasn't about to let them get evicted.

"I said, 'That's not nice behavior,'" Ms. Schein says. "Where would we go? What would we do?"

Eventually the owner and the renters reached an agreement: If the Messiah showed up, the Scheins would move into one of the two rooms in the apartment for the remainder of the lease, while the owner and his family would get the other one.

But what if the apartment owner says the Messiah has arrived and the renter doesn't agree? This particular disagreement has come up before in Jerusalem's history, although it was about 2,000 years ago.

Today, a remarkable servant and scholar of God went home for eternity. Dr. William J. Larkin was a most cherished colleague and advocate participant in the mission of God (including make helpful posts to this blog). Bill was a world-class New Testament scholar whose publications over the past 30 years influenced countless students and colleagues around the world.

When I joined the faculty of CIU ten years ago, Bill took me under his wing and coached me on this most remarkable culture of missional scholars. He truly set the pace for a group of Bible and theology professors who not only knew about God's mission in their heads but experienced it in their hearts and with their hands.

Thank you Lord for Dr. Larkin! May you continue to use his legacy for your glory . . . as he would say, "by the grace of God." We miss you already Bill!

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, perhaps one of the more polarizing holidays of our year. It's very fun and exciting for the love birds, too commercial and insincere for the skeptics, and sometimes especially lonely for the single.

Singleness's greatest sorrows are secretly reinforced every February in the souls of the not-yet-married still waiting for their wedding day. While many of our friends and family are inundated with dates, flowers, chocolate, and love notes, lots and lots of the valentine-less are overwhelmed with everything from impatience to bitterness, from shame to regret to confusion.

There will likely be good-intentioned, lovingly-naive husbands and wives who forget the emotional complexities of unwanted singleness and enthusiastically encourage you to just enjoy this season of "dating Jesus." Yes, Jesus is our only hope and cure, but it won't be in some hopelessly romantic, chocolate-covered, neatly-wrapped way. The truth is that the unfulfilled desire for a companion and lover, especially year after year, much more often feels like the grief and bondage of joblessness or infertility than the uninhibited emotional and devotional freedom many imagine. "It is not good for man to be alone."

The Full and Fruitful Single Life

We want our lives to be full and fruitful. We want to experience all God has made and given us as much as possible, and we want our experience in this short life to really count for his glory and the good of others. Sadly too often in our not-yet-married lives, we've made marriage a qualification for that kind of happiness and significance. There've been days — a lot of days — when I really couldn't imagine a full and fruitful life without a wife.