Living in Love
On the Church calendar, we are nearing the end of the Church Year, and the readings for the next few weeks will invite us to think about the End Times and being prepared for Jesus' return.
When you think about it, we each have our personal end time in the sense that, unless Jesus returns first, we will die. Are you prepared for that? Perhaps another way of putting that is this: Are you prepared for Jesus whenever He decides to take you home to heaven? What will He find when He finds you?
Thinking about such things can sometimes scare us and make us want to avoid contemplating the whole matter. But as we look through the Scriptures, what we learn is that God does not want us to be scared, but to rest in Him. All things are in His hands. Not only that, but He wants us to enjoy life.
But how are we supposed to enjoy a life that we are told will be filled with wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and famines, false prophets, and persecution that may even come from our own family? Happiness is not based on circumstances, but on the Lord of our circumstances.
But there is something else to give us joy in life. It's called the Holy Christian Church -- God's people living together, supporting each other, and encouraging each other as the Holy Spirit lives among us, assuring us that Jesus is alive and well and with us as our Good Shepherd and Savior.
One of the evil one's biggest ploys is to isolate people and get them to feel they are all alone. No one cares about them. God doesn't care about them. But in His Church, Jesus would be at work through the Holy Spirit so that God's people take care of each other, not just through encouraging words but also through tangible actions that help others in their need. That's called living in love.
And this is what we pray that our Lord finds when He comes for us: People who have put all things into His hands and are living in love, confident that our Lord Jesus who has begun a good work in us will bring it to completion at the Day of our Lord Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6).