End of the Line

When I look out into the future it is hard to imagine the end of the line.  I don’t find myself denying the outcome of evil actions, choices, and lives.  Rather it is a heartfelt inability to believe the game is finally over, finished, done, ended, a chapter now over.  I find myself beginning to hold on a Hope of an ending with more interest these days, yet I when the images of the ending begin to emerge – it is as if I am looking at my dreams through a dream.  Nothing seems real.  It all seems improbable and unlikely.  I wonder if I will ever believe, even if it is unfolding.
 
The stark warnings are here.  Today’s writers and old talk of a judgment day.  The mix of metaphors and reality blend in a stark, bleak, and gruesome picture which haunts one’s dreams long after the words have been forgotten.  “Proud humanity will disappear from the earth.  I'll make mortals rarer than hens' teeth.  And yes, I'll even make the sky shake, and the earth quake to its roots under the wrath of God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the Judgment Day of his raging anger.” (Isaiah 13.12, 13) 
 
Yet we live.  Our calling is not one of plodding along a mindless path!  We are called to engage, participate, and be a vibrant member of the community in which we find ourselves.  The process is risky.  There will be people who don’t like us.  We will struggle with others who would exploit and harm us and those around us.  There is even a chance we will live in pain and with an unending sense of loss.  Life will, is difficult!
 
There is a promise of how things will end for those engaging with Divinity’s mission.  It is an ending of faith.  From my vantage point I can see it is and always has been about faith.  Life is about faith in compassion, belief in mercy, and a passion to unconditionally accept those around us.  The question is really not about the end, rather about the beginning – now.