2024-08-03 A Meditation on Tomorrow Now
“3 As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” 4 And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray. 5 For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray. 6 And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. 9 “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. 10 And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. 11 And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. 12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” (Matt 24:3-14 ESV)
The nexus and sought-after dispensation, is on the flipside of untold many tribulations and radical pronouncements: we seek out a Next Stage yet the end is not yet. Yet, the outlandish sights and the words we marvel at, are here to confuse us as to readiness: they are simply the birth pains, as Jesus said. They are simply our prerogative and license to Yearn for tomorrow’s Peace and Tomorrow’s Accomplishment, the war itself at least reassuring us that concerns and faultlines, persecutions and strife, have been Met in an expedition soon. A foray soon. A lancing forth, soon.
The Christian soldier is in the earliest vibrations of that Dance, the earliest Future Sight promised in the hereafter, long after we’re gone, but Soon in Christ-timing. When they shall see things untold and hear things impossible. When we shall see things our ancestors and earlier saints generally longed to see. That sight is God-given Patience of the ungamed, solicited-but-intact, petitioned Soldier of the Cross to maintain the highwater mark of coping and of readiness and of magnanimity towards the weaker half.
We are ready, yet the end is not yet. We are anticipating, yet called upon for patience. We are not to be tuckered out by our vigilance, the long night of watching is not to deny us that patient time of sleep. We know this, that when tides turn and the world turns to War, that it shall be unexpected and the duality to our own just-barely ready, distracted a bit, otherwise occupied a bit, having for an instant let down our guard for a bit, yet in all this Overall Strong. For it is in no man’s, woman’s comprehension and understanding as to “Well, of course things will turn Serious on such-and-such a day”. No, that seriousness is both inevitable and patient: look, as we the people lay claim to much that had been passed over as owned by the enemy. Look, as we the people deuce that Enemy with ownership and with peace, with time to frolic in the Elysian fields so recently denied to us, with time to wish for and hope upon the future of a next generation, with time to march to the drumbeat of music and instruments replacing the arms of war.