The End is nigh!

Ezekiel 7:6

The end is coming. The end is coming. It is stirring itself up against you. It is coming! 

Thought for the day – The end is nigh!

According the a Pew report in 2010, 75% of Christians in the US believe that Christ will return. That’s down from 79% in 2006. Of those who believe Jesus will return only about 1 in 10 believe Jesus will return within their lifetime. So for the majority of believers, the end is nigh, but not imminently. What a change from the early church who firmly held that Christ’s return was imminent. Granted that was nearly 2000 years ago, no wonder the idea of Jesus returning seems more like a distant promise than a close reality.

Where do you sit with this? Are you of the belief that Christ’s return is imminent, within your lifetime, Or is it something we just long for and most likely won’t see this side of eternity during our lifetime? And what does Scripture say about Jesus’ return? There are effectively 6 principles:

1. The return will be visible and universal — not hidden or private

2. It will be sudden and unexpected — like a thief in the night, like lightning

3. It will involve judgment — separating the righteous from the unrighteous

4. It will bring resurrection — the dead raised, death defeated

5. It will mean consummation — God's kingdom fully and finally established

6. The timing is unknown — and Jesus is explicit about that

Wherever we stand on the matter, these principles should be our guiding light when it comes to discussions about the end of the age. And maybe we should be a bit the writers of the Nicene Creed who simply said: "he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead" and not worry particularly about the details.

 

Ezekiel 6:15

I will use my power against them and destroy the land, from the desert to Diblah. Then they will know that I am the Lord.

Thought for the day – When will they learn?

I was watching the movie Sully recently. It's the movie about the pilot that landed his passenger jet in the Hudson River in New York. And one of the things that struck me most about that was just how people seemed to think that they knew better than Sully did about what had happened. The simulations, everything, just seemed to be rigged against Sully and his co-pilot. And it got me thinking about when will we learn. The whole point of the movie was about the bravery of Sully and his courage to stand up and be counted and stand up for the truth. And yet the authorities seemed dead set to disprove him. 

When would they learn? 

And it also got me thinking about how it takes something really horrible happening for us to stop and think about what's gone wrong. 

When will we learn?

So again in the news today there was an article about one of our National Health Service trusts and the care that it gives to mothers and newborn babies. And how that care had fallen far short of what people expected. And so an inquiry is being launched to discover what happened. 

When will we learn?

God's words to the people of Israel today, I will use my power against them and destroy the land from the desert to Dibla, then they will know that I am the Lord, is an example of how it takes a catastrophe before we learn. And surely we as people have the intelligence to think through our actions to come to the logical conclusion but we as Christians have something additional to simply logic. We have the Holy Spirit who is able to guide us and provide us with the information and the discernment that we need to make sure that we don't get to a point where there are lessons to be learned because things have gone horribly wrong. 

So today will you allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you. To speak into situations that might be heading south, but with a bit of forethought and prayer and a bit of discernment, we'll be able to pull up. So that we don't have to have an inquiry about something that's gone horribly wrong.

Compassion Fatigue

 

Ezekiel 5:15

The nations that are around you will ridicule you and laugh at you. When I punish you because of my anger, fury, and fierce revenge, you will become something ridiculed and something horrible. I, the Lord, have spoken.

 

Thought for the day – Compassion fatigue

I wonder how Ezekiel must have felt getting these prophecies. Living in Babylon, far away from Jerusalem, he was getting prophecies about things that were happening in real time to people that he probably knew and cared about. And yet even here, God was asking Ezekiel to say things to the people of Jerusalem that would have no doubt hurt him and made him worry.

 

I don't think we can ever understand what Ezekiel was going through. Knowing that what he was prophesying was coming true and then hearing reports of the prophecies coming true.

 

And while we are never going to be in Ezekiel's position, I wonder how we respond to bad news coming from faraway places. Sometimes I think we develop something called compassion fatigue. A situation where we just cannot be bothered with anybody else's difficult circumstances, particularly those far away that don't really impact us.

 

A good example is the Ukrainian war. To be honest, I'm not sure we really care about the Ukrainian war as much as we did when it first started. And yet there are still people dying on the front lines. There are still people dying in drone attacks and missile attacks. There are Christian pastors being challenged because of the stand they take against Russia or against Ukraine for that matter. Last week we saw the cathedral in Kyiv bombed.

 

Have we developed compassion fatigue? Quite possibly. And maybe we need to be asking God to forgive us for that. Maybe we need to be asking God to renew our hearts so that we can show compassion to those who need it most again.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

There is an occasion for everything,

and a time for every activity

under heaven

 

Thought for the day

The blogger Jill Printzenhoff writes about a time how she went fishing and caught nothing and yet the fisherman next to her managed to pull out seven. They were using different bait and she describes it as not her day. She finishes her blog post with these words: ‘You keep striving, you keep working, and you keep on keeping on. Because some day when you cast your line . . . you will be at the right spot at the right time . . . and that day will be your day . . . the day you catch that all elusive fish!’

I believe that there is a time for everything under heaven and earth and sometimes, well actually, all the time we need to be patient and wait because the reality of the situation is we are working to God’s time. The writer of Ecclesiastes also says this about God’s timing: ‘He has made everything appropriate[b] in its time. He has also put eternity in their hearts,[c] but man cannot discover the work God has done from beginning to end.’

There is a mystery to God’s timing that we cannot fathom because we do not have the full picture and so to paraphrase Jill: ‘we keep striving, we keep working, and we keep on keeping on. Because some day we’ll cast our line . . .we will be at the right spot at the right time . . . and that day will be our day.’

Trust God. His timing is perfect.

Jill’s blogpost can be found here:

https://jillprintzenhoff.com/2017/06/13/not-my-day/

 

Consumers?

Ever heard of the phrase ‘too much of a good thing?’ How much is too much for you? And how much of a good thing is too much? At what point do we say enough is enough?

I’ve been thinking about this recently. A lot. I believe God has been challenging me to think about how much I consume. I feel like this one of those moments when I stand up in a support group and say ‘my name is Ray and I am a consumer.’

I’m not being flippant here either. I think we need to confess that we are consumers. God has given us an amazingly wild, diverse beautiful place to live. Our consumption is destroying it. And it’s because we have believed in the lie that more is better. The latest phone, the newest car, the most up to date fashion. The must have toy. More is better is what the world tells us.

The Gospel is that we find our value, our purpose, and our satisfaction in Christ alone. Paul writes in Philippians 4:19 ‘And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.’ It seem hard when everything is telling us that more is better. But if we take God seriously, we will look at the things we do and say and spend our money on and ask the question ‘Is God enough?’ If the answer to that question is no, then we need to come to God and repent and ask to be shown a better way.

Revenge?

We’ve talked about not seeking revenge because revenge is only God’s to give here on Walking the Way, but I’ve never thought about how I would feel if the revenge I so desperately wanted was to be inflicted on someone. How would I react if the person who has done me harm came to what I think of as their just reward? Would I be happy and gloat? Well the Bible makes it clear that rejoicing over the downfall of your enemies is a no-no.

And actually that’s quite hard because  think our natural inclination is to maybe not rejoice but certainly take a certain amount of satisfaction when those who have hurt us get their just rewards. And then I think about the grace and forgiveness of God and how God has extended that grace and forgiveness to me. And how God expects me to do the same to those I class as enemies. We were God’s enemies, but he chased us down and saved us. Think of the witness if we do that to those who hurt us and are now being hurt. ‘No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.”’

 

Poverty

Proverbs 10:15

Wealth protects the rich; 

poverty destroys the poor.

 

Thought for the day

The author Terry Pratchett once wrote that the difference between rich and poor people was their boots. Rich people can afford to buy boots that last a lifetime, poor people end up spending what little they have, on constantly replacing the cheap boots they have to buy because they can’t afford better boots. And it’s an interesting take on today’s verse about wealth and poverty. But the question of wealth and poverty is a difficult one for Christians. Growing up in Southern Africa I was very aware of vast differences in wealth distribution. Even here in the UK, the differences between the wealthy and the poor are everywhere if you know where to look.

In the Scriptures wealth is a blessing but it is a blessing that can and will for many people become an idol. Go read the account of the rich young man (Matthew 19:16-30). But like many of God’s gifts they are given out as he chooses. There will be believers that have to struggle for every penny, relying on God for everything. Jesus reminds us that poor are blessed because the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them. What we need richer believers to do is support those poorer believers. This is a biblical model that we see in the book of Acts where the early church sold their possessions and gave the proceeds to the Church. Because they recognised that poverty can and does rob, steal and destroy the poor. James writes in James 2: ‘If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it?

God gives us talents, gifts and blessings so we can share them with others. But we are called to support those who have little but maybe dealing with poverty begins with buying someone a better pair of boots.