Maranatha

Maranatha is an Aramaic phrase so treasured by the earliest Christians that Paul preserved it untranslated, even when writing to Greek-speaking Corinth. It divides as marana tha — our Lord, come! — a prayer for the return of Jesus. That the Aramaic-speaking first believers were already praying to Jesus as Lord and longing for his coming is powerful early evidence of the church's faith.

The prayer echoes the very last request of the Bible — even so, come, Lord Jesus — and it became a kind of watchword of Christian hope. To pray maranatha is to lift one's eyes past the troubles of the present age to the certain return of the King, and to ask, with all the saints of every century, that he would not delay.