He Will Keep You Strong To The End

There remains much talk among Christians about the end of this age. For instance, millions around the world have purchased books from the Left Behind series. As I continue my meditation upon the Apostle Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, I see that from the outset of the proclamation of the Gospel the apostles wanted believers to be concerned about this issue. He writes in chapter one:

"Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful (1:7-9).

Some of the questions that come to mind:

• What does it mean to wait for our Lord Jesus and to wait eagerly?
• How will He be revealed?
• When is the end? The end of what?
• What is the day of our Lord Jesus Christ?
• Is there to be more than one day?

In that connection I've been reading a few books and doing more surfing of the Net about the year 2012. Soon the movie will be out. My oh my but the trailers are scary. If you are vulnerable to this sort of thing--and the movie folks are counting on it--you will be spending sleepless nights pondering how you might escape the upcoming disaster.

Some tie this in with the global warming issue to point out that the planet is warming up rapidly. The polar ice caps will soon melt and release clear water into the salt oceans. This will disrupt the transporter currents around the world, causing cataclysmic storms and an instant rise in the temperature.

Add to this, the probability that sunspot storms will most likely occur in December, 2012. And what do you have? THE END, friend, THE END!

Let me respond to all of this scare stuff by going back to 1 Corinthians. In v.23 Paul teaches simply and profoundly, "We teach Christ crucified." That means that God loved the world, including you and me, so much that He was not willing that a single one of us should be lost to eternal death and separation from Him. In His mercy he has called us to faith in Jesus, granted us forgiveness and holiness in Christ and the absolute certainty that He will never leave us nor forsake us. We are, when all is said and done, His children. And He completely and fully intends that we will spend endless ages with Him in endless bliss, peace and contentment.

When the doomsayers come at you in books and the media, find your comfort in the wonder producing words of that most familiar psalm:

"God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging." Psalm 46:1-3

And also take courage from the words quoted above: "He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful."

Anxiety and Hope

I grow so weary of bad news and forecasts of disaster. Some current that have come across my desk the past weeks:

* Swine Flue Pandemic Hits Texas
* Few Signs of Recovery from Recession
* All of Europe will be Muslim in another 25 years
* US Losing Drug War

And the list goes on. As I try to absorb this daily dose of bad news, I begin to imagine all sorts of terrifying things about to happen. My next reaction is to try to figure out what I ought to be doing to stem the tide. Should I get some flu medicine? Stock up on canned goods? Contact my congressman?

And then a still small voice speaks within, calling to mind the Words of my Lord's Sermon:

"For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing?

"Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! Do not worry then, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear for clothing?' For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own " (Matthew 6:25-34).

The Apostle James, along with others, reminds us that we really do not know what tomorrow holds. All our worrying about it, together with all those carefully laid out plans, will not change it (James 4:13-15).

I've been watching the TV program Lost for the past several weeks. I've missed a couple years of past episodes already. Sorry, but I had no knowledge about its existence until my daughter told me she was a fan. The program explores a favorite sci-fi topic, time travel, together with the implication that if we could travel back in time to make some different choices we could change the future. That makes for some interesting and complex fiction, but that's all it is--fiction!

Such stories (and there are many) assume that time merely happens--blindly. The universe is some kind of machine governed by physics, scientific laws, understood or not. The only beings with free will are we humans. We make choices. These choices influence these fixed laws, changing them. Then stuff happens. If we could travel back in time to make other choices, then other stuff will happen instead. So goes the story line.

Time, like everything else in this creation, is a creation. The universe is not a blind machine that merely happens to be. We Christians rejoice that God created everything through Christ (John 1:1-4). He not only created all things. He sustains them by His Word of power. It is this same Lord who, in the fullness of time, entered His world to carry the burden of our choices, our godless choices, our sin. He is the One I turn to whenever my heart grows weary with all this bad news. On the first day of a new week He came out of the grave to announce once and for all that in Him our sins are forgiven.

Time travel? Possible? Nope. Fiction. We can't change the past, but in Christ we have confidence for the future. So I'm going to focus on today. How may I give glory and honor to Christ and His Father today? How may I care for my neighbor today? Tomorrow never comes. Yesterday cannot be repeated. All I have is today. And that is enough.