Right Behind

With all this "rapture" talk, I started thinking. . . . .

What if there were a "rapture" but with one caveat: You had a choice to go or not. What if God gave you the choice to opt-out and say, "I'll be Right Behind you guys," and stay amidst a world that would now be almost totally devoid of everything you valued and found security in, just lost people with ever-increasing evil and ever-decreasing communities of faith? Not like some demented game of "survival" - but with the intention of bringing God's redemption into the most hostile world imaginable.

Would you stay or would you go? Are we so focused on not being "left behind" that we forget that this is exactly what Jesus did to His disciples? He said, "I'm going - and you are NOT coming with Me." Then He left them with the tools to bring redemption to the world they were still living in, to bring salvation to them.

With Jesus, salvation was never merely about getting out of this world and into heaven. It's a big part of our hope, of course, but it's not the be-all, end-all of salvation. Salvation is about being a disciple of Christ here and now and even "then" whenever and whatever "then" is.

John 17: 15 - 19

"I am not praying that You take them out of the world but that You protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. I sanctify Myself for them, so they also may be sanctified by the truth."

Oh, the Humanity

I was driving back to work from visiting some people at the hospital, and I passed a young woman pushing an older woman in a wheelchair down a pothole-filled sidewalk in the pouring rain. I looked at the old woman and started groaning inside . . . . humanity stinks. It's all about relentless decay and pain. Rain, muddy puddles, wheelchairs, an aging process that has one destination. In my discouragement I had an urge to write a book and call it "Humanity Stinks." Or whatever stronger word you want use. It was a picture of continual pain heading to a greater pain.

Then my thoughts turned to the younger woman, pushing this older lady through the muddy puddles in the driving rain, and my thoughts changed completely. It suddenly became a picture of continual love heading to a greater love.

I had one quick glimpse of two women, a rainstorm, broken sidewalks, muddy puddles and a wheelchair. I guess there are two ways you can look at humanity. God says in Deuteronomy 30, you can choose life or choose death as your viewpoint, then pleads with us to "choose life."

Choose life.