Ensign: It's Jesus On The Cross!

All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye. Isaiah 18:3

AN ENSIGN ON THE MOUNTAINS 19 April 2013

So Jeffrey my son cried out to me Wednesday morning when he showed me the picture he drew of black lines bisecting the page, both vertically and horizontally with a person's head at its intersection and his body suspended beneath it. (You should see the picture with this.) I said Jeffrey – whose drawing and coloring have steadily improved this year of kindergarten – did a great job on this picture and asked innocently what it was; I said it looked to me like someone in a target sight. Cue Jeffrey crying out, “It's Jesus on the cross!” and laying his head on the table like I'd rejected him.

He's very proud of his work, and I can't same I blame my little guy. But over the last day or two I've been thinking about my response to him (after praising how good his work was, because I think it is, and silently praising God thank You that he and his sister Sarah are openly taking about what and who they hear in church) and especially in light of this week, from bombs going off at the end of the Boston Marathon to the fertilizer plant near Waco, Texas to the explosion I've heard about in Bangalore, India, concerned that all we see are ourselves in a target. AS a target.

“It is sad that we're catering to the lowest common denominator in our world and always planning for the worst-case scenario.” I said this in a Facebook chat with a friend that day, and while I wasn't specifically thinking then of the Second Coming – the event those who accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior refer to when Jesus returns to Earth upon the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4, prophesied as the same spot from which He left Earth in Acts 1:9), distinct from the Rapture (Anglicized from the Latin translation of the Greek verb for “caught up”, 1 Thessalonians 4:17) before that when those same acceptors/believers will be called up to heaven and vanish from Earth – THAT'S an event which constantly has us in its cross-hairs.

Hearing this week of so much death and destruction, I'm wanting to brush up on my Thucydides … no, he's not a Bible character, he's the author of and a character in The History of the Peloponessian War, a reasonably objective account of the lion's share of a thirty years war over who would control Greece in the late fifth century BC. Considered one of the best histories and the first to not attribute solely divine influences to persons and events but rather all too human motivations – brutality, cruelty, the hunger for power, the usual suspects – you could argue we're living it now.

“But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” From Matthew 24:36 that's paraphrased in Luke 17:26 to the ends of their respective chapters, when Jesus is being asked what the signs of God's kingdom arriving are (by the disciples in Matthew, by the Pharisees in Luke) He pretty much says they're just like now. Life will go on, and then suddenly WHOOSH – ok, you probably won't hear anything – one will be taken from a task, and the other left behind. So being ready for Jesus to come, for God to call us to heaven (church-speak for the Second Coming and the Rapture, bear with me) is what's really got us in His cross-hairs.

For we never know when the trigger is going to be pulled, so to speak. Matthew 24:27 – “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” – shows it's gonna be immediate. (Lightning is.) We can be dying of disease for years, even decades, yet we can't tell you the precise moment we'll die. If we knew THAT, don't you expect we would do everything to stave off that day?

But we cannot stop the sand. We cannot stop time. So does it not make sense to be ready, to prepare ourselves not with some survivalist camp of goods that can rot but be ready – whatever we as Christians believe (or not; I expect anyone with a pulse sees in our “days of Noah” a world that's progressively getting worse and worse) about the exact mechanics of the Rapture or the Second Coming – to embrace our truly loving and forgiving God, to be certain that there is more to life than the life we're living. Unto dust our bodies will return, but we can also be lifted up as Jesus on the cross. Amen.

Remember Lexington and Concord,

David

P.S. I write this weekly devotional to keep in touch with all of you in my address book, and I hope to be an encourager too! If you find that I’m not or you want me to get lost, just let me know, thank you!

We praise You, Lord, for this beautiful day You have given us! Please pray with me for the peace of Jerusalem on both sides of the fence and for physical and spiritual communities around our world.

Lord, we need Your strength to fight the natural disasters and human ills to ultimately treat the cause and not just the symptoms; until we who have power change, this world You have made us stewards of won’t either.

Thank You, Lord, for all those in leadership and service here and abroad. Thank You for the opportunities we have been given as well as the promise of new life through Your Son. And may we all seek and have a blessed week! Amen.