Still Alive and Didn't Get Raptured

Well . . . what happened? Or maybe I should rephrase that- didn't happen! I made it through Saturday night with Betty, my brother-in-law, Bill, and his wife Marcia who are good Methodists and we got "left behind." Maybe it was how much wine we drank getting ready for "the end." We even splurged a little and bought some really good fruit of the vine like the stuff Jesus produced at the wedding at Cana thinking that if we were going to disappear somewhere else that we might as well do it right. Sunday morning the sun came up as usual and my neighbor's dog, Elvis, was barking in the backyard next door. Jim my neighbor who is a pretty fundalemtalistic Christian was yelling at Elvis to shut up that it was too early to be barking. I opened my front door and there were kids on skateboards, but what the heck would they know about the end of the world anyway. There were no abandoned cars in the middle of my street, and from the traffic in Franklin, TN this afternoon as school let out I don't think anybody got raptured.

It's left me wondering- and probably you, too- why anybody buys into these dire predictions that supposedly are based on scripture. I've been around the Bible long enough not to be able to find anything that confirms the "end times." Even if I could find evidence there I don't believe I could predict the end if there is really going to be one. Excuse my heresy, but I'm neither sure, or worried, about either the end of the world, or my own demise. Frankly, there's not anything I can do about either.

I post this blog partly with tongue in cheek, but musing over the fact that we've already got a few folks saying that it's really next year that every thing is supposed to fall apart. I heard a good quote from Stephen King on NPR the other day. He had been asked some years ago what he did to create such fear in his novels and stories. His reply was that he didn't create fear. He says he creates "uncertainty." People have a hard time with uncertainty which can lead to fear. There's a lot of that going around these days. Maybe it would be a good idea for all of us to be as certain as we can about one thing that is supposed to push all fear aside: the unconditional love of God through Christ.