There are days when I most sincerely pray for the End of All Things. Those are the days when there is no job prospect in sight, there are storm clouds coming up behind rapidly, nothing seems to have resolution or forward movement or even positive progress. (Yes, progress is sometimes a bad thing.) There are days when I pray to the Lord, “Give me a place of rest on this earth or in this earth, doesn’t matter which.”

Our life is a little too apostolic at times. We seem to be journeying with Paul year after year, working a bit in this city, meeting with this little community of Christians for a while, then taking ship and sailing on, getting marooned occasionally, and always, always, knowing that if we don’t trust in God, we haven’t got anything we can trust.

This, I admit, is from a state of anxiety. Anxiety means that my heart is not where it should be, that I am thinking in a worldly fashion. It means that I am stuck in Time yet again, looking at All There Is as if it is nothing more than one day after another, world without end.

But that is not where God wants us to be. Today is what we have. Who knows if tomorrow will be better, worse, or indifferent?  We can’t know. If the Lord gives us bread today, that is all we need. If today we are sheltered from the storm, that is all we need. If tomorrow the Lord gives us blessing, or if He chooses to take us away from this earth, then amen. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord!

I am not a rapturist. I believe that the preaching we hear these days on the thousand year reign, on the lifting up of the faithful, and on the condemnation of the unrepentant is a terrible misunderstanding of the scriptures. It frightens people into joining a church. It frightens them following someone’s interpretation of Jesus’s teaching. It does not teach a gospel of love and forgiveness.

The End of All Time for us may mean the day we finally learn in our hearts to accept what God has given us now, and we stop looking for tomorrow. It may mean that we lose our ambition, our striving, our desire for anything but the beautiful consummation of the Love of Christ.