Coming Back!

Does the God of heaven occupy your thoughts?  Do you think about the Lord’s return?   Are you yearning, longing to go home?  Do you think of the Lord’s return ushering you into a whole new life.  The key to peace and happiness in this life is that another, better life waits for those who are in Christ Jesus.    Yet, the Lord’s return to this earth is often viewed by Christians with anxiety, or even worse fear, focusing on judgment, punishment, and destruction.   Why is that?   I believe it is Satan’s attempt to rob us of the hope and peace that are inherent in His coming.   Satan’s greatest weapon is to deceive us to fear that day rather than long for it. 

Literally each moment we must choose our priorities and where we allow our thoughts to take us.  This is a real battle that competes for our minds in wanting to please ourselves, wanting the things we see, and being too proud of what we have.   Christians living in comfort are at great risk of choosing this world.  Don’t let Satan fool you. 

Brothers and sisters, we want you to know about those Christians who have died so you will not be sad, as others who have no hope.¹⁴ We believe that Jesus died and that he rose again. So, because of him, God will raise with Jesus those who have died.¹⁵ What we tell you now is the Lord's own message. We who are living when the Lord comes again will not go before those who have already died.¹⁶ The Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. And those who have died believing in Christ will rise first.¹⁷ After that, we who are still alive will be gathered up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And we will be with the Lord forever.¹⁸ So encourage each other with these words.  I Thessalonians 4:13-18

Our Lord is coming back and the promise of His return is a source of hope, a light to look to, and an anchor to hold us firm IF, we allow it to be.   Choose it, accept it at face value, meditate on it, and encourage one another with the reminder that He is coming back.  When Christ comes again, those who belong to Him will be raised to life.  The last enemy to be destroyed will be death.  The trumpet will sound, and those who have died will be raised to live forever, and we will all be changed.  Death is destroyed forever in victory.   (I Corinthians 15 NCV)   Choose to make His return your joy, your song, your peace, and your hope.   Let this promise cause us to be people whose heart-felt prayer is summed up in the words “Come Lord Jesus”.

Scotty Elston
Shallowater, Texas

Not My Eutopia

            Sometimes I like to dream up my own eutopia. Yes, that is the correct spelling, because in the Greek “eu” means “good.” Eutopia means “good place.” “Utopia,” the spelling which we usually prefer, means “no place.” I’d rather be in a good place than no place, I think.

            This world likes to wield the power of eutopian ideals over and inside our heads, like we don’t have reason to enjoy what we’ve got now. My thoughts jump from this--now--to heaven, never formulating thoughts of possible eutopias in between, because when people try to force you to dream up perfection it can be rather off-putting.

            I know of no “eutopia,” in the truest sense of the word, but we live in “utopia,” I think. Our reference point for beauty is airbrushed photos, sliced and stretched wealthy people who live lives that I can’t even imagine--the most intricate and extravagant and painted up. So I don’t know where their beauty is coming from--the person or the alterations. And I don’t have any major alterations, so where does my beauty come from? Probably “no-place.”

            Sometimes I want to turn off my cell phone or ignore text messages, delete my Facebook account and never check my email. But that makes people angry. They get offended. Sometimes I just need some peace. Complete and total solitude. Is there any place we can go to get that, without repercussions that evoke guilt? Nope. “No-place.”

            There is no way to banish insecurities or the belief that we are inadequate or that we should be achieving greater or making more money or losing more weight. I can’t, because there’s always a girl walking by weighing 103 pounds and an unbelievably tanned, muscular man strutting just behind. And then their bodies are always on billboards. There are always useless Louis Vuitton bags doing their song and dance in a store window. Yes, they are useless, but such a necessity. Then the girl from the billboard is carrying one so why shouldn’t I carry one too?

            I can’t banish the thoughts. They invade every corner of my mind--not always the same ones and usually not all at the same time, but there is always at least one floating around. There is “no-place” for my thoughts to travel and hide from inadequacy, no place where they will not encounter that from which they are fleeing. They flee from our misjudged and wrongly created eutopias that are not what they claim to be. They flee from “eutopia” and end up wandering around in “utopia.”

            Within a utopian mindset, knowledge is pleasure and pleasures are happiness. Within this mindset, we believe that God created us for the purpose of giving us total earthly happiness. Utopians believe that genuine happiness can be found in earthly pleasures. Scripture says ultimate happiness is inherent in the nature of God. That is what we must pursue for true happiness and fulfillment and pleasure.

“How happy is the man

who does not follow the advice of the wicked,

or take the path of sinners,

or join a group of mockers!

Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction,

and he meditates on it day and night.

He is like a tree planted beside streams of water

that bears its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither.

Whatever he does prospers” (Psalm 1:1-3). 

Father,

May we find pleasure in your instruction

in the strength of your salvation

in your undying compassion

in your loving mercy

in your relentless grace

in your concern for our

transcendent joy.

We love you.

Amen.

Erin E. Daugherty, Abilene Christian University