Alright, I confess. I have been doing some idle speculation recently, prompted by international unrest, national divides, and domestic violence. But hey—that’s just life, right? In allowing myself to sink down into such speculation, I have not acted wisely. Nor are my reasons and arguments particularly clever or well-thought-out. I have been dabbling with (drum roll please)… eschatology. The end times. Armageddon and all of that. When is Jesus returning? What will life on earth be like? Might it just possibly happen in my lifetime?

Like, I said, a bit foolish and certainly highly speculative. So please (really, I mean this quite earnestly) don’t any of you get any weird ideas that I know what I’m talking about or that I have the inside scoop or that I am a prophet or such. Just allow me the indulgence of thinking out loud and online (and yes, I know—dangerous business).

What I am really confessing is that I have lost a sense of urgency and anticipation. I haven’t been watching and praying for Christ to return (and one of the problems with that is that He just might catch me unprepared and unawares—like a thief in the night). I haven’t been seizing the opportunities that come my way to share the love of God in Christ with others. I have been self-absorbed. I have forgotten, at least in the way I live, that Jesus is returning—and possibly quite soon.

My take on the “soon return” of Christ language in the Scriptures is that those time references are best understood as being from God’s perspective. With God a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years as but a day (see 2 Peter 3 for the angle I’m working). An awful lot of history is packed into every day, and yet the work of Christ on the cross is as if it were but a couple of days ago. So many souls. God desires that none should perish. So many yet to be gathered in before the end. But He is coming soon! It will happen. And whatever will He find us doing on that great Day? What will He find me doing?