The Return.9

"Two will be working in a field. 
One will be taken [i.e. received]
    and the other left behind [i.e. turned away].   

Two women will be grinding at a mill. 
One will be taken, [see above]
    and the other left behind [ditto]. 

Watch therefore: 

for you know not in which hour your Lord will return. 

But do know this: 
that if those in the house had known the hour of the thief’s coming, they would have remained watchful, and would not have let their stores be plundered."

--Jesus

I have a co-worker who has asked me on several occasions

image from politicaloutcast.com

if I believe in the "rapture" (meaning, of course, the way he believes in the "rapture".)  After waxing theological on a few of those occasions I've finally resolved to just say: No. I believe in Jesus.  Sigh...

I've come to understand that it isn't just Christians who, in times of great turmoil --which, by the way, is the cycle of mankind's history -- resort to finding comfort and relief in their version of doomsday predictions.  For decades the scientific community has offered its own impending cataclysmic scenarios resulting from man-made this or that. 

"It has been 45 years now since the first Earth Day. You would think that in this time frame, given the urgency with which we were told we had to confront the supposed threats to the environment—Harvard biologist George Wald told us, “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken”—at least one of the big environmental disasters should have come to fruition...

• Global Cooling 
• Overpopulation
• Mass Starvation
• Resource Depletion
• Mass Extinction
• Renewable Energy
• Global Warming 

The environmental doomsayers don’t just extrapolate blindly from current trends. They extrapolate only from the trends that fit their apocalyptic vision while ignoring trends that don’t fit. They project forward the current rate at which we’re using up our resources, but ignore the history of our ability to innovate and create. They get all excited by 20 years of rising temperature or rising oil prices—but ignore two centuries of rising wealth and longevity.
It’s almost as if they started with a preconceived conclusion and cast about for evidence to support it." 

(from http://thefederalist.com/2015/04/24/seven-big-failed-environmentalist-predictions/)



The only truly predictable thing is that doctrinal dogma, computer models, and political positions too often trump truth and create warring factions, disputing, hatred, greater governmental intervention, and power-mongering.

The watchfulness Jesus describes --and is building into His followers-- is not marked by accurate predictions of questionable interpretations, but by resistance.  

• Resistance to being un-choosable through disobedience, indolence, carelessness, thoughtlessness, fearfulness or self-will.
• Resistance to the thief and his lies.
• Resistance to letting evil plunder our hearts and homes.
• Resistance to letting the world system squeeze us into its predictable mold and robbing us of the freedom to live life in harmony with our Creator.
• Resistance to fashionable and chic, wealth and power, envy and coveting, materialism and ambition.

Let us then live with a readiness to give ourselves to Jesus in the quality and loveliness of life He inspires through His Spirit.  In a word: love one another as he loves us. Every moment, every day.