IDK is blogspeak for "I don't know."
I don't know.
You don't know.
Neither pastors nor laypersons know.
No one knows. And here's why:
"Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour." (Matthew 25:13)
As a pastor (and a Christian) I've been getting a lot of questions lately regarding "Doomsday." It's interesting. When I was driving back from New Jersey to Illinois, I saw a bunch of billboards proclaiming May 21st to be the end of the world. Or at least the rapture. The real "end of the world" is in October after we've had five months of weeping and gnashing of teeth. Some people really bought into this to the point where they were emptying out bank accounts and either a) giving all their money away or b) spending all their money on lavish vacations because why not? The world is going to end soon. And May 22 rolled around. Low and behold, those people are still here. The tremendous earth quakes did not swallow us whole (although a volcano did erupt in Iceland).
But here we are on May 22 and we're still here. Sure, people left piles of clothes on their lawns as a way to make fun of those who really believed the world was going to come to an end yesterday. There's a part of me that wonders if all the people who really bought into it yesterday realized they were still here and decided that meant they were not chosen. Now we all have to suffer together. Is this damaging to faith? What if you really bought into doomsday on 5/21/11? Do you stop believing in God because no one came to gather up the believers?
I certainly hope not, and my heart goes out to the group that bought into this because I can't even imagine what's going through their heads right now.
And we will be having this same conversation a year from now when we start getting closer to December 2012.
So people have been turning to me and asking me what I think about the whole thing. Do I believe in the rapture? Absolutely. Scripture tells us that Jesus will come and gather up His believers. Our bridegroom will arrive, but here's the kicker: We don't know the day or the time.
Jesus says keep awake! because you don't know when He's coming. The rapture could happen tomorrow. It could happen three minutes from now. It could happen three centuries or three milenia from now. We just don't know. We can't calculate. People try to calculate it, and they take great leaps and bounds to make their equations give them an exact date and time. But Jesus tells us not to worry about what comes next because whatever happens, God is going to take care of us. God knows the day and the time and that's all we need to know. Anything else we claim to know is just our way of playing God which is what got us kicked out of Eden in the first place.
Keep awake. I'm all for evangelism telling people to believe that Christ saved them and recognize how Christ is active in their lives and hearts. But to tell people that there is a deadline is just foolishness. Of course there's a deadline, but we will never never never be able to predict for sure when that is.
So what do I think about this whole thing? I think we put much stock in equations. We want to know what happens, want to know when, want to know when our bodily expiration dates happen to be. You know something, though? I don't want to know. I just hope that if I'm still alive when the end of the world gets here, I'm not alone. I want to be with someone I love. And hopefully when that end comes, I'm not left behind.
Hopefully you aren't either. But don't get caught up in a whirlwind of propoganda from people claiming to have all the answers because they are just as subject to God's ambiguity as the rest of us. I worry about enough things on a daily basis; I'll leave the worrying about the end of the world to God. That's his department and one less thing I have to be responsible for.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
As the Deer
I had a really cool experience this morning that I wanted to share with you.
I'm currently in Rochester Indiana at the Geneva Center participating in a new pastor seminar sponsored by my synod. It's been a good time for reflection, I've reconnected with some friends from seminary, and made some new friends.
This morning I got up and showered at 6:30 (which is really 5:30 for me because I'm visiting the Eastern Time Zone where it's an hour ahead from what I'm now used to) and I went outside to walk the camp's outdoor labyrinth. Stretched out in one row, the camp director said the labyrinth is about a mile long, so as you can imagine, it was a good, long walk. I've walked a lot of labyrinths over the years, but nothing compared to this experience.
The ground in which the labyrinth was laid is sand. At first I thought wearing flip flops to do this was a poor idea because it's not soft sand: it's gravely sand. I was going to go back in and change my shoes, but decided sneakers would be worse because all the gravely sand would get stuck in my sneakers. So I stayed in flipflops and it was easy to kick the sand out from the shoe. As I was making loops and processing in my mind all the things that have been weighing down my heart lately, I noticed something I've never seen while I'm doing a labyrinth before: I noticed my footprints in the sand. Seeing my footprints and paying attention to the ground made for an interesting thought process as I considered the journey and emotional rollar coaster that is ministry. I saw my footprints from where I've been in my journey on the labyrinth and thought about where I've come over the last 9 months since starting at this church in Illinois. Interestingly, watching my own footprints led me to see footprints of others who had walked the labyrinth, including quite a few deer tracks.
Part of the labyrinth wound around a group of evergreen trees and the sand was blanketed by a bed of pine needles. Walking on the needles was much softer than the gravely sand and actually made for an easier walk. But I couldn't see my footprints (do we spend a lot of time reflecting on the parts of the journey that are easy or do we focus on the parts that were difficult so we can either a) dwell on them or b) learn from them?). Also, since the path wound around trees, there were times when the trees were actually directly in my path and I had to change my course and walk around them (what roadblocks do we run into on our journeys that make us change our couses? are they comfortable roadblocks or do we tense up with anxiety over them?).
Whenever I noticed myself wondering how much more of the labyrinth I had to walk, I intentionally stopped walking and closed my eyes to listen to the early morning birds. I spend too much time worrying about getting to the next thing; it does me a world of good to make deliberate pauses to remind me that ministry means my time is God's time, not my own.
After about 45 minutes, I came to the center of the labyrinth where there were six large boulders that you can sit on. So I sat down with some kind of preconceived notion over what I was going to think or pray about. I had only been sitting still for about thirty seconds before I heard a rustle behind me. I slowly turned my head around to face the woods and these three deer came walking out of the bushes. They walked very slowly and deliberately, keeping their ears perked up and their eyes directly focused on me. After about a minute of just staring at each other, they started to lower their heads and graze.
Then it got interesting.
The biggest deer (not a buck...at least not one with antlers) started to come closer to me. He or she would snort and then stomp a hoof. Then she/he'd bow his/her head and snort and stomp again with the other foot. I've never heard a deer snort before. Then the deer walked over the first row of the labyrinth. Now this deer is about forty feet from me. He stepped closer and got as close as thirty feet. I sat perfectly still, not moving to get the hair out of my face that the wind blew, not even moving to get rid of the mosquito that was setting to work on my ankle (ughhh...so itchy now!). We stared at each other for a while until the deer scampered back to the others. He did it again a few minutes later and this continued for about fifteen minutes: I sat on the rock and then grazed while watching me closely and coming in and out of the first ring of the labyrinth. Finally, they disappeared back into the woods.
I've never been that close to wild deer before. It was an amazing experience not just to be in the presence of these animals, but to be....that....still. For me to be that still is an achievement all by itself. My usual prayer in the labyrinth is "Dear God, stop me so you can move me." And in that experience this morning, God really stopped me and for about fifteen minutes the world was silent and empty except for those deer and me. I truly felt the Spirit in those fifteen minutes.
I'm not going to walk the labyrinth again while I'm here because I know I will go to the labyrinth with the expectation of the experience being repeated. It's not a good idea to go before God with preconceptions, so I want to treasure the experience I had this morning. It was really beautiful and I saw the experience of the labyrinth in a way I've never seen it before.
I encourage you to think about your own journeys. How is God calling you to be still before Him? Where is God calling you to be? Where have you come from that has gotten you to where you are? If you have an opportunity to walk a labyrinth, take it. If not, find a quite walking route that doesn't have a lot of noise pollution and just walk with God. Pay attention to your journey and think about all your footprints whether you can see them or not.
The interesting thing about seeing my footsteps in the sand was that I can see where I've been, but I can't retrace them. That's not how the labyrinth is set up. That is your theological fodder for the day.
Wishing you the peace of Christ,
Pastor Becki
I'm currently in Rochester Indiana at the Geneva Center participating in a new pastor seminar sponsored by my synod. It's been a good time for reflection, I've reconnected with some friends from seminary, and made some new friends.
This morning I got up and showered at 6:30 (which is really 5:30 for me because I'm visiting the Eastern Time Zone where it's an hour ahead from what I'm now used to) and I went outside to walk the camp's outdoor labyrinth. Stretched out in one row, the camp director said the labyrinth is about a mile long, so as you can imagine, it was a good, long walk. I've walked a lot of labyrinths over the years, but nothing compared to this experience.
The ground in which the labyrinth was laid is sand. At first I thought wearing flip flops to do this was a poor idea because it's not soft sand: it's gravely sand. I was going to go back in and change my shoes, but decided sneakers would be worse because all the gravely sand would get stuck in my sneakers. So I stayed in flipflops and it was easy to kick the sand out from the shoe. As I was making loops and processing in my mind all the things that have been weighing down my heart lately, I noticed something I've never seen while I'm doing a labyrinth before: I noticed my footprints in the sand. Seeing my footprints and paying attention to the ground made for an interesting thought process as I considered the journey and emotional rollar coaster that is ministry. I saw my footprints from where I've been in my journey on the labyrinth and thought about where I've come over the last 9 months since starting at this church in Illinois. Interestingly, watching my own footprints led me to see footprints of others who had walked the labyrinth, including quite a few deer tracks.
Part of the labyrinth wound around a group of evergreen trees and the sand was blanketed by a bed of pine needles. Walking on the needles was much softer than the gravely sand and actually made for an easier walk. But I couldn't see my footprints (do we spend a lot of time reflecting on the parts of the journey that are easy or do we focus on the parts that were difficult so we can either a) dwell on them or b) learn from them?). Also, since the path wound around trees, there were times when the trees were actually directly in my path and I had to change my course and walk around them (what roadblocks do we run into on our journeys that make us change our couses? are they comfortable roadblocks or do we tense up with anxiety over them?).
Whenever I noticed myself wondering how much more of the labyrinth I had to walk, I intentionally stopped walking and closed my eyes to listen to the early morning birds. I spend too much time worrying about getting to the next thing; it does me a world of good to make deliberate pauses to remind me that ministry means my time is God's time, not my own.
After about 45 minutes, I came to the center of the labyrinth where there were six large boulders that you can sit on. So I sat down with some kind of preconceived notion over what I was going to think or pray about. I had only been sitting still for about thirty seconds before I heard a rustle behind me. I slowly turned my head around to face the woods and these three deer came walking out of the bushes. They walked very slowly and deliberately, keeping their ears perked up and their eyes directly focused on me. After about a minute of just staring at each other, they started to lower their heads and graze.
Then it got interesting.
The biggest deer (not a buck...at least not one with antlers) started to come closer to me. He or she would snort and then stomp a hoof. Then she/he'd bow his/her head and snort and stomp again with the other foot. I've never heard a deer snort before. Then the deer walked over the first row of the labyrinth. Now this deer is about forty feet from me. He stepped closer and got as close as thirty feet. I sat perfectly still, not moving to get the hair out of my face that the wind blew, not even moving to get rid of the mosquito that was setting to work on my ankle (ughhh...so itchy now!). We stared at each other for a while until the deer scampered back to the others. He did it again a few minutes later and this continued for about fifteen minutes: I sat on the rock and then grazed while watching me closely and coming in and out of the first ring of the labyrinth. Finally, they disappeared back into the woods.
I've never been that close to wild deer before. It was an amazing experience not just to be in the presence of these animals, but to be....that....still. For me to be that still is an achievement all by itself. My usual prayer in the labyrinth is "Dear God, stop me so you can move me." And in that experience this morning, God really stopped me and for about fifteen minutes the world was silent and empty except for those deer and me. I truly felt the Spirit in those fifteen minutes.
I'm not going to walk the labyrinth again while I'm here because I know I will go to the labyrinth with the expectation of the experience being repeated. It's not a good idea to go before God with preconceptions, so I want to treasure the experience I had this morning. It was really beautiful and I saw the experience of the labyrinth in a way I've never seen it before.
I encourage you to think about your own journeys. How is God calling you to be still before Him? Where is God calling you to be? Where have you come from that has gotten you to where you are? If you have an opportunity to walk a labyrinth, take it. If not, find a quite walking route that doesn't have a lot of noise pollution and just walk with God. Pay attention to your journey and think about all your footprints whether you can see them or not.
The interesting thing about seeing my footsteps in the sand was that I can see where I've been, but I can't retrace them. That's not how the labyrinth is set up. That is your theological fodder for the day.
Wishing you the peace of Christ,
Pastor Becki
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