Tonight, I watched night fall as I made dinner. It was the particular sort of muddy purple light that made it unclear whether an unexpected storm was rolling in or if it was merely past sunset. Part of me hoped for a little storm—nothing large or disastrous, just a distant growl of thunder and 20 minutes of rain—the kind of storm you can write a poem about—before I checked the clock: 6:36 PM.
It's getting to be the time of year when it gets darker earlier than it used to and my internal clock has to recalibrate. It's the same internal clock that made me sleepy at 5 PM while I was praying evening prayer. Regardless of what's on my to-do list, my body and the world I live in know two things: rest is important, and a hemisphere-wide season of rest is on approach.
Autumn and winter are my favorite seasons. The earth seems to let out a breath it held for the rest of the year, as if all of nature can finally relax. Trees and plants start to go dormant. I've watched squirrels racing back and forth across my yard as they frenetically bury acorns and pecans, oblivious to my observations as I wonder where in the world they found the pecans and where I'll find seedlings next May. But the squirrels and groundhogs and birds all know that the resting time is coming. They don't seem to fear it as they make their preparations.
I've been thinking a great deal lately about the end of all things. The apocalypse, you might call it. The end times. The return of Jesus Christ, the king of the universe. It's occurred to me how often people—oddly enough, Christians in particular—view such things with fear. As a little child, I prayed and asked the Lord not to return until I was ready because I didn't feel as if I'd lived enough yet. I wanted to get married and see the world. I wasn't ready to leave my teddy bear behind.
Here I am, about 26 years later, and I'm still not married, and I still haven't seen as much of the world as I'd like. But I view the return of Christ with much less trepidation than I used to. I used to espouse eschatological views straight from Left Behind, with a mysterious rapture that would create mass chaos as people suddenly vanished. I didn't even know there were different views of the end times, some of which don't even include a rapture, until I was an adult. So I grew up in fear of the event that will conclude human history.
Until recently, that is, when I read all of Revelation. I didn't try to study it or analyze it. I just read it. And the prevailing themes that came to me were preparedness and hope. There is such eager anticipation for the rectifying of all things, for the restoration of Earth, for the final healing of our sorrows—for God to once again dwell with us in the world he made to share with us. Even amid the scrolls and bowls and beasts and all the visions that don't make sense in St. John's book, there is the sense that we should desire the second Advent and be ready for it.
If we are among those who belong to Christ, then we should bear the twin weights of joy and urgency. It doesn't matter when he returns as much as it does that we are found working. People still need to hear the gospel. The poor still need hope and resources. The broken still need healing. We need to be busy making the earth ready for its king's return rather than huddling under our blankets worrying that we'll get zapped up to heaven in the middle of traffic and cause a multi-fatality pileup.
I suppose a healthy fear of Christ's return is appropriate. We shouldn't be lackadaisical about it, but instead of anxiously trying to predict when it will happen (which isn't even possible), we should be burying pecans. We can see the signs that the time is short. The hour is late. We've been in the end times ever since the Ascension. Every day, we get closer to seeing the King of kings and Lord of lords returning in glory. But that doesn't give us an excuse to either panic or do nothing. I want nothing more than for my God to arrive and find me praying or serving. I want him to find me busy with kingdom work.
Every day, we should be preparing for permanent rest, when death and war and hurricanes and weeping will cease to exist. We shouldn't resist it, the way we resist autumn and winter and try to keep going at a breakneck pace that our bodies can't sustain. Instead, as the squirrels and birds do, we should look to the signs. The leaves are turning red.
The resting time is coming. Let's bury some pecans.