Today's Scripture Reading (April 15, 2023): Isaiah 37
The month has become one of funerals and saying
goodbye. It started with the death of my grandmother. On the way home from her
funeral, I teased my wife that an era had ended. For a while, I was both a
grandson and a grandfather. But now, with the death of my last grandparent at
the young age of 107, I was no longer a grandson, just a grandfather. Then I
was approached by a friend about doing a funeral for someone I didn't know but who
had a connection with the church building. That funeral is taking place later
this morning. And then another friend passed away. That funeral has been
scheduled for the first part of May. Typically, we think of April as the month
when spring finally arrives and life pokes through the formerly snow and frost-filled
ground. But this year, it seems to be highlighted by death.
Death has a habit of sending me into torrents of
remembering and waves of memory. The husband of my latest deceased friend
passed away a couple of years ago. I know his wife, now also gone, has been
mourning his death ever since he left us. And now, she is again where she
wanted to be, by his side.
And then this torrent of remembering brings me back
to the death of my friend a couple of years ago. His death caught him by
surprise. He really believed that he would not die, that Jesus would return
before his body finally wore out and ceased working. He had heard the words
spoken by modern-day prophets that said the world was ending, not some years
from now, but today. Every day he woke worried that this might be the day,
although worried might not be the exact word needed here. But it is a strange
paradox that we, as Christians, seem to have adopted. We have come to believe
that the world will descend every day into more and more chaos until the moment
when we are about to destroy the world ourselves, but instead, Jesus comes back
and saves us from ourselves.
I am not convinced that is true. Are we living in the
last days? Of course, we are. We have been for the last two thousand years. And
Jesus will come back at a time of the Father's choosing. But most of the noise
that I hear and that we accept as modern-day prophecy is nothing more than clatter
that distracts us from what is essential.
Jesus instructed us to be salt and light. We are not
supposed to be waiting for the world to end in chaos; instead, we should be
making this world a better place. We are the salt that this world needs and the
light that chases away the darkness and chaos. We must stop listening to the
modern-day prophets and start being Christ with skin on for this world to see.
We need to hear Isaiah's words. Just as Hezekiah
needed to ignore the words of Sennacherib's underlings and concentrate on what
God wanted from him, we need to listen to the words spoken over our lives and
situations. "Do not be
afraid of what you have heard" (Isaiah 37:6); keep your
eyes on Jesus and what he asks of you. And the end will take care of itself.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Isaiah 38 & 39
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