It was a passing comment made by a good friend of mine.
It’s worth sharing the context before getting to the heart of the matter.
They have it all planned out. They spent ages matching different scriptures and seeing the meaning behind those numbers and these numbers, and with that in hand were able to map out how things would be. They got the timetable down to a tee and were in particular waiting for the emergence of the big bad.
Their way of reading events were like watching each episode of the Marvel Cinematic Universe which was building up to the revelation of Thanos and his plan to do something massive. In their case, everything was set up more to look at the unveiling of a big personality to lead the whole world into something desperately wicked.
The problem is that this took focus away from something even more important than any bad – and that was the return of the great good.
As long as time had not unveiled the big bad yet, it appeared as though people still had time on their side to tut and shake their head at other events, but no sense of urgency only because the big bad wasn’t on the scene yet.
My friend, demolished this by explaining the pressing sense of urgency in the early church to live in the light of the real return of the King. There’s no time or room for any sense of complacency in setting up all kinds of timetables of events. There was only an ever greater desire to live in the light of the return of the King and not take any sense of delay as a reason to believe the promise was not going to happen.
This same friend made me chuckle because of the reference to the big bad and suggested that waiting of Thanos was a joke and showed that probably people had watched too many Marvel movies.
The reality is that we are not waiting for any Thanos figure to come and make a big impact. Life is lived under the promise of the return of King Jesus and with that promise comes the sense of urgency to live knowing what time it is. Time to throw away the timetable of events and live for today knowing time is short.
(Photo by Kevin Grieve on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 