You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.- Romans 5:6

Today’s Scripture Reading (January 28, 2018): Romans 5

It is the end of life as we know it. It really doesn’t matter what the event is, we are people obsessed with the end of time. Maybe it was the shutdown of the government in the United States and the consequences that that could have. Or maybe it is the final stages of Brexit. Or it is our financial debt as societies. I have to admit that it is the last one that bothers me. I sat with a good friend not too long ago as he tried to explain to me why countries need to go into debt. Part of what he told me is that, for good economic health, there is a time to borrow and a time to pay back what is owed. I smiled. But, for me, that is exactly the problem. In my entire life, all I have known from governments is the time to borrow. Are you trying to tell me that we will reap the benefits of our out of control spending and then leave it up to our children and grandchildren to pay back? From the deepest part of my heart, I apologize to the next generations for our lack of discipline. You did not deserve what we did to you. It is the end of life as we know it.

In Christian circles, it is often the rapture that we talk about that will soon bring the end of life as we know it. And, often, I hear the proponents talking about the time being fulfilled, that the events have taken place that seems to allow for the return of Christ. There are a couple of reasons why this does not excite me. First, every generation since Jesus has seen the fulfillment of prophecy in the events of their days that has allowed the people to believe that Christ’s return was imminent. And there is a good reason for that. The Christian Church is supposed to live as if Jesus could return just moments from now. We call this idea chronology; it is the idea that the end will come following a certain order of events.

But the other problem is that the Bible knows two types of time – Chronos or Chronology and Kairos, maybe better understood as when the time is right. Kairos is the quality of our special moments. When Paul says that when the time was right, Jesus died for the ungodly, he is speaking of this Kairos time. When Matthew talks about the generations between Abraham and David, and David and the exile, and the exile and Jesus birth, this should not be treated literally, but rather as a poetic description of Kairos time. And Jesus will return, just as he did the first time, and just as the moment came when he died for the ungodly; he will come, and the end will come when the time is right.

And when will the time be right? When God decides that the time is right, and all of our power to try to unlock the mysteries of the future are thwarted by this single fact; God moves when he believes that the time is right. What we can be assured of is this; just as Jesus died for the ungodly when God decided that the time was right, so will he bring about the end of life as we know it when the time is right. But that decision is found only in the mind of Gog. And there is nothing that can change that.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Romans 6