Steady on

I'm holding onto you, like a diamond in the rough
Like a diamond in the rough".  Shawn Colvin.

"You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up into a spiritual house".  Peter.



In my youth it was books like The Late Great Planet Earth, films like Thief in the Night and songs like I'd wished we'd all been ready that pumped out the message - Jesus was secretly coming back soon to take away his people before all hell broke loose under the Antichrist and the world faced a final countdown to judgement day.

It was a stirring message - get ready - and it certainly stirred us up... for a while.

Then I started reading scripture and history and something struck me like a sledgehammer. 

God's people didn't escape the hard times - 
God took them through them.

Think about that for a moment.

When Adam fell in the garden, God didn't 're-make' humanity. 
Creation had been wrecked by what mankind chose, so He had every right to write it off as a bad job, and start over, but that isn't what happens.

The Lord comes to our fallen parents and says I'm going to work through your travail to bring redemption (Genesis 3:15).

God will walk through the broken world with them.

I admit that the last couple of months have on occasion left me troubled and anxious. New, sadly restrictive conditions leave us wondering and asking what is happening - it doesn't 'feel' safe anymore. The truth, of course, is that it is never truly safe outside of God's ideal for us, so in this world we're always guaranteed one thing - tribulation! Trouble for mind, body and soul is a certainty, but we are asked to rejoice amidst such turmoil because if understood aright, it will work to our benefit.

Working through instead of avoiding hardships makes us deeply aware of our need for help beyond ourselves, and it's as we turn from self reliance to care from God and others that we become changed. We realise that life isn't about what we selfishly want for ourselves, but what value and significance can be gleaned by giving of our best to enrich the lives of others.

There's been a number of 'get ready' videos this month made by those that eagerly tell us to 'detach' from the world, because Jesus is just around the corner, so make sure you're being holy because you don't want to miss the ingathering of the saints.

There's lots of passion and zeal, but are they right?
Is this the last days of the last days?

What's happening now isn't unique.
Christians have faced times of plague, even lockdown, before. Certainly, the scale of this 'feels' somehow larger, but there's things we should bear in mind, especially regarding what Jesus Himself and His Apostles say about His return - it isn't something done in a corner!

As I've reflected on all this over the past couple of days, I'm beginning to think the best way to see it, to borrow a quote, is to say that this isn't the beginning of the end, but may be the end of the beginning towards the end.

Take a look at the key image of history given to us in Revelation 12. It's pretty clear we're in the latter half of what's described here (see verses 10-17) - this is the conflict of the last days (which started on the day of Pentecost - see Acts 2:17-21), which has been raging for some 2,000 years.

God is taking His people through, that they might be refined.

That means living as well as we can in the present.
That means sharing the good news that God has come to be with us through our trial in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of His Son, to make us free.

Plant your trees, write your music or poetry, take your images and make your (well informed) you tube videos, but above all, do good to one another out of a genuine thankfulness to God for all He gives, and you'll be ready for the new creation when it appears.