Luke 21
While people have long memories, we
often have small windows from which we see the world. It is amazing to me that my children cannot
comprehend a world without iPods, Nintendo, and hundreds of channels (none of
which worth watching) on the television.
When I tell them that we had three channels when I was a child, they
just shake their heads. Of course, when
I was a child, I once asked my mom what it was like when the world was
black-and-white … because the television shows from her childhood were
black-and-white. (Color television
surely always existed, didn’t it?)
My point is this: We seem to think that what is has always been
and will always be. Our lives become the
benchmark of time.
Jesus has a different vantage
point. Being that He is the one who
said, “Before Abraham was, I am,” should give us a clue that His point of view has
a much larger scope than our own!
Indeed, He sees (and is present at) the Beginning, the End, and
everything in between. And His message
to us in this reading is that there is an End, and there is more than this
world and what we see and experience in it.
So don’t place your hope in the things of this world.
There is only One who has always been,
currently is, and always will be, and that is God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And the Son tells us, “Heaven and earth will
pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
In a world that is dying, and as time
slips away from us, God, in His love for us, gave us something permanent: His Word.
He speaks to us there, confronts our sins (which are the source of
death) and delivers forgiveness to us because the Word became flesh and died on
a cross to atone for our guilt, and the Word rose from the dead and gives us eternal
life. God puts His Word in our ears when
the Bible is read aloud, touches our eyes with it as we read to ourselves, soaked
us with the Word in the Water of Baptism, and feeds us with the Word in the
Lord’s Supper. As the world fails us in
so many ways, God gives us His Word – something permanent and unfailing – and invites
us to pray.
O God, deliver me from the idea that this
world is all there is, and help me to live in Your eternal Word. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
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