The Daily Devotional is a spiritually deep well, to which thousands of readers are drawn each day. The overall voice of the Daily Devotional is tended by the Stillspeaking Writers’ Group and supported by the staff of The Pilgrim Press.
ARE WE AT THE END YET?
Stillspeaking Devotional by Kenneth L. Samuel
The end of all things is near. Therefore, be alert and of sober mind.
1 Peter 4:7 (NIV)
A man stood at the corner of a busy intersection with a big Bible in one hand and a booming megaphone in the other.
“Listen everyone! Take heed!” he shouted. “This world will soon be over! Everything will soon be passed away! Soon and very soon!”
A homeless man puffing on a sagging cigar walked up to him and said, “Bud, that’s the best news I’ve heard all year long.”
The utter termination of all that is familiar to us in this life isn’t particularly a comforting thought to most of us. The end of eras that once defined our experiences. The end of close relationships severed by the distances of time and space. The end of dreams that never found a footing in perpetuity and the end of life as we know it, with no more tomorrows.
Boyz II Men put it this way: “I thought we’d get to see forever, but forever’s gone away… It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.”
Terminations can be dreadful, but transitions give us something to look forward to.
1 Peter’s solemn pronouncement of this world’s imminent ending is not followed by agony over what is about to cease, but by anticipation about what God is about to bring forth. Any mourning about what has been is consumed in the faithful expectancy of what is about to break forth.
Without endings there would be no new beginnings, so let the cessations begin without interruptions.
The end is here. And so are the seeds for new ways of being.
Prayer
Lord, help me to stay woke through the wake. I want to see what the end will be; then I want to see what will be. Amen.