The Gospel on Advent 1, Year B calls us to look to ‘end times”. Mark provides a description – “Sun and moon will not shine” and the “stars will be falling from heaven”
“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.”
Tom’s sermon said “we should give a lot of thought to the End Times.” What does it mean to us? It is the bringing together of all God’s purposes and all God’s plans for the world and for humanity and for the Kingdom of God to all come together into fruition.
“Now we don’t know what it looks like. We pray that God restores Earth and war will cease. We have clues what end times look like but We just have to remain awake and to watch.”
That is important because we have two things in the conflict going on inside of us:
1 Bios – physical things of this earth. This is the world we live in:
We tend to worry about Bios coming to an end but that is not as important as the next item
2 Zoe – Eternal essence of life. It is what happening inside of us. This is what matters.
Are you aware how that eternal essence of life is moving inside of you? It doesn’t happen automatically you have to seek it. Many people are clueless about this and not understand Zoe.
It is about being on the road and on that road when you are seeking the internal and eternal essense of life, that’s where you encounter Christ because that’s the road Jesus walks.
That life we lead here is preparation for life which is to come, eternal life which comes to us because we have eternal essense what it means to be alive.
To be in this world and be aware of only Bios our physical selves, will not help you in end times. What matters is the degree to which we embrace the presence of Christ in the world in dwelling with God in the holy spirit that makes us more than just bio. It makes us aware of the eternal nature of who we are truly are, children of God, given gift of eternal life. But we must go on the road to receive it.
We must understand the spirit of God which is inside of us. That is where God dwells. That’s the temple to which Christ comes.
How to make a difference in the world? Live inside where god dwells, the Zoe of life the true essence of what it means to be live in this world and the world to come.