Embracing Eschatology

It is a dreary and ever-darkening day here in the Falls. The tree leaves are beautiful, but look dullish in the early afternoon (lack of) light. Here is where I need a hefty dose of apocalyptic to keep me going...

For some reason today, I'm feeling pretty down. I can't seem to wrap my mind around my work and previously 'done' things are coming undone. Things that once had incredible significance seem to be wearing painfully thing and other things that have always called to be given significance aren't shutting up--but I still don't want to recognize them...yet. Things just seem so mundane.

What is it in my life, work, and being that is of cosmic significance? Revelation took the suffering of early saints and plotted it in terms of a great cosmic battle, with the ending revealed as a source of hope in painful situations. Dragons and birthing women and whores and bowls and trumpets and locusts all fit together to bring across this (amongst other) points. It is hard to see this currently in my life, in the life of my neighborhood, and in the life of the Falls. All it seems to be is a slowly unraveling sweater that could be beautiful, but soon we'll be naked laying on the floor (laying on the floor), we've come undone.

Herein comes the gospel. It is hope. It is also, painfully right now, historical. I can't just wrench it from its context and place it in my own--if I do so, it won't be the gospel. But the play that the drama sets up, I want a place in that. I want to be apart of that great dramatic unfolding towards the final 'de-fuzzy-ing' of God's redemption. But all the parts currently on offer don't fit (so I want to think) in the part that I thought I would (or should) be playing. I'm living in that tension of what I maybe should do versus what I want to do.

Psalm 42 and 43, as always, are the meditation of the day: In the daytime, YHWH commands his hesed-love, and in the nighttime, his song is with me; a prayer to 'God-of-my-living'. Wait [o my throat] for God--the salvation of my face and my God.