On November 12, 1833, there was a meteor shower so intense that it was possible to see up to 100,000 meteors crossing the sky every hour. At the time, many thought it was the end of the world. It inspired t
his woodcut by Adolf Vollmy.
The first thing the people experiencing the meteor shower in 1833 thought surely that this was the end of the world as they knew it; the second coming of the Christ. But life went on.
A few years earlier, there was the New Madrid earthquake that was so violent that the Mississippi River flowed backward (North) for several hours, and new lakes were formed, boats became landlocked, and the mighty Mississippi changed course. Surely this was the end of the world. And life went on.
September 11, 2001. The attacks in New York and Washington. April 18, 1906 and the “Great San Francisco Earthquake”. October 8-10, 1871 and the Great Chicago Fire. Wars in the middle east. Crops failing. Blizzards. Drought. Surely one of these is the foretaste to Jesus coming. Yet life goes on.
The thing is that we won’t know, Jesus said so when he said “nobody knows when that day or hour will come, not the heavenly angels and not the Son. Only the Father knows.”
I bring this up because of something I see happening, not just here in this community; not just in this county or state; not even in just this nation. I see it pretty much everywhere. There are people telling us that we need to get our lives in order because ‘the end is near’. Not only that, we are probably doing it wrong and that their way is the right way.
To pick up a little from last month, I sometimes feel like the unwanted stepchild in the religious community, especially when I am with people who are more fundamental or conservative in their theology. What drew me to the United Methodist Church was nothing more than people learning and actually listening to God while using what is called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral: basing beliefs on Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience, to understand and apply it to the Christian faith. That means we each actually ‘think’ instead of following like lemmings, something someone else tells us – even if what they tell us really feels wrong.
God and Jesus speak to each of us every day. All we have to do is listen for the sound of the Holy Spirit. I find that more often than not, I hear and understand things that are 180 degrees out of phase with what others are saying. That is what makes the United Methodist Church so special to me. They have finally taken a stand and said that we choose to love everyone. We don’t love you for what you bring to the table but we value your gifts. We don’t love you because you look, or talk, or think like us. We don’t love you because you are rich. And we don’t love you because you are poor either. We love you because Jesus told us to love God first and love each other.
I saw a picture on the internet in which it showed Jesus healing a small child in its mother’s arms. I could see that. But then someone added the statement / question: I’d love to heal you but I first need to know, are you here legally? As I mentioned, the Old and New Testaments tell us to love each other and to treat those who are not from here as we would treat a long time resident.
Maybe we really do need another big event to make us all wake up from this slumber we are in and ask if the sky falling in an intense shower like the one in 1833, or is Jesus coming again. If it WAS actually happening, how do you think we would be judged? I personally would want to have to apologize for being too welcoming and caring instead of answering for why I didn’t do more.
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