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Your Redemption is at Hand

Your Redemption is at Hand

Last updated on: December 1, 2018 at 11:21 pm by Mary Pezzulo

Your Redemption is at Hand 2018-12-01T23:21:52-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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I’ve got plenty to worry about. What are we to eat? What are we to drink? How are we to pay the water bill? How am I to get by until the tax return? What if there isn’t a tax return but taxes due this year? What if there’s a recession? What if they close the borders? What if we get bombed? What if it’s a nuclear bomb? What if the wildfire comes this way? What if the floods get worse? What if the equator becomes uninhabitable? What if society completely falls apart within my lifetime? What if these signs I see in the sky and sea mean that this really IS the End Times at last? How long will it take before He really comes back? How much will I have to endure? What if I make a fool of myself? What if I can’t hold up my head and stand firm long enough?

And all of those are perfectly legitimate terrors. I’m not trying to mock the anxiety of anybody’s everyday life. The anxiety of everyday life is enough to kill you. It kills people all the time– and worse, it draws you into a fearful nightmare, when day-to-day life is bad enough.

But that’s my point.

If we let those anxieties, including the fear of the End Times, completely distract us and suck us into a dream– then we’re getting drowsy. Then we’re sleeping instead of doing the work that is ours to do. And we’re not even having the fun of a daydream, but preoccupying ourselves with a nightmare when we ought to stay awake and keep working at the tasks Christ gave us to do. We’re not keeping our heads up and helping one another carry our crosses after Him. We’re carrying a cross that doesn’t exist for us yet, and it’s destroying us.

This Advent, let go of that cross and pick up the one the Lord has for you instead.

Stand erect, raise your head, for your redemption is at hand.

Whether these particular times are the literal End Times or not, your redemption is at hand.

In something less than one lifetime, you– you personally, whoever’s reading this– will see that Child Who was born in Bethlehem. He will come back for you. He is coming to bring you to where He is, and He is with you now to help you get there. Don’t stop to worry about whether these are the End Times or not, because you know that, for you, they are. Don’t stop to worry about whether you’ll be able to stand, just stand. You will fall countless times, and if you keep repenting He will keep helping you up.

Stay awake.

Be faithful in small things, because everything you can do is a small thing. As far as you’re able and more than you think you can afford, provide food to the hungry, give shelter to the homeless, clothe the naked, and don’t turn your back on your own. Love your family in whatever way they let you love them. Love your neighbor as if they were family, because they are. Comfort the sick and the imprisoned. Forgive your enemies here and abroad, and don’t miss an opportunity to do good for them. Make wise choices politically, as far as you have any choice at all. Live in a way that is in harmony with Creation instead of wasteful of it. Be attentive to your surroundings, and take delight in everything that is delightful. Mourn with those who mourn. Pray without ceasing. You, yourself alone, can’t stop wars or genocides, environmental disasters, catastrophes in the sky and the roaring of the sea. No, you[re simply not powerful enough. But you can live a life united to Christ, doing the work Christ has for you, and Christ will heal the world– when He comes again in glory, and in other ways as well, by miracles I can’t predict. In one way, He has already redeemed the world. In another, He is redeeming it right now in answer to your prayer. In another, He is coming again to redeem.

That’s what Advent is all about.

Our Redemption is coming, He almost here, and He is here already. Our time of worry is almost at an end, and the time to stop worrying is now.

We begin at the end.

(image via Pixabay)

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