In today’s reading, Jesus talks about the coming of the Son of God, the end of the world, and the great judgment.
The whole point of Advent is to help nudge us out of a kind of apathy as we go about our day to day things, while forgetting that life is going to end for us individually.
Sometimes we forget that the whole point of everything we do is to lead the world toward the kingdom of God.
The kingdom may be millions of years away – who knows? It seems so distant that there would be a world at long last transformed where there is no war, no sickness, no tears, no fights, and no arguments – a perfect world.
It’s a long haul.
That’s why I need what some call a “radical perseverance”. It’s hard to have. To persevere and try to build peace in the world and know that when I die, there will still be war. To persevere and try to build love in society and know that it is a seed planted, but one I’ll never see the harvest of in a lifetime. To persevere in trying to shape myself into the kind of person I know God made me to be…and to realize that I will never be that person until some day God wonderfully transforms me through death.
That kind of radical perseverance – sustaining a conscious effort and hope even though I’m not going to reach the goal in my lifetime – that’s the kind of perseverance I need to have.
