Tsunami in Japan. Earthquake in NZ. Floods in QLD and VIC.

What will it be next?

The whole family watched the movie Left Behind yesterday, and it provoked some interesting responses and (for me at least) personal reflection.

The movie is based on the book of the same name by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, and is the first of their series of biblical fiction books that imaginatively and dramatically detail how the Book of Revelation might play out when the Rapture happens.

I am reminded that it is not about me.

As the main character Pan-Am pilot Rayford Steele says, there is something much bigger and much better we can look forward to.

I am reminded that the time is short.

While I go about my daily duties as wife, mother and friend, I must also retain a larger perspective. Eternity is looming. And with it the spiritual repercussions of the choices we make here and now about the person and claims of Jesus Christ.

Everything I do here and now is just a rehearsal for the Truth that is coming. The Narnian stories put it very well: we are living in the false Narnia, which even though it gives us joy and supplies us with good things, is just a mirror image of the real thing. The real Narnia is what we really need and where we are designed to live "happily ever after".

³ As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

⁴ Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. ⁵ For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. ⁶ You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ⁷ Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. ⁸ All these are the beginning of birth pains.

...

³⁶ “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,^f]">[f] but only the Father. ³⁷ As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. ³⁸ For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; ³⁹ and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. ⁴⁰ Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. ⁴¹ Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. ⁴² “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.

Matthew 24