Were You Born in the Wrong Time?

So, there’s all this stuff about the blood moon, Israel, Iran, and the end of the world popping through my newsfeed, even when I’m not on Facebook

It’s become part of my life’s fabric, this message that we’re barreling toward some inevitable conclusion and that the groans of this planet are more than old age, they are, in fact labor pains which, as we all know, don’t go on forever, at some point, they cease.

My children, in their twenties, don’t remember a time that terrorism wasn’t a headline. It wasn’t hard for them to accept that Bill Cosby isn’t as funny in person.

Brown University just stripped the Cos of his honorary degree and that reminded me why the Lord is slow to judge. Bill’s become just another headline proving God’s Word to be true because Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 5:24 “The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later.” Like a slime trail, I think, from a slug, and that’s just what it feels like when someone we thought was something, turns out to have been using their good face to hide their bad behavior.

But, you see, God sees all. No one makes a fool of the Almighty so judgment doesn’t happen now, it comes at the end when every choice we’ve made plays out, not just in our own lives but in the next generation and the next because aren’t Hitler’s evils still spawning disciples and won’t that be added to his crimes on the other side?

Comforting, though, is the next verse Paul wrote that tells the flip side of God’s view, “So also good works are conspicuous, and even those that are not cannot remain hidden.”

So, our good choices aren’t immediately judged and rewarded with an earthly gold star or a check in the mail but they echo, too, through time, affecting the next generation and the next, so they snowball into a great eternal award banked for us in the safest of places to be enjoyed forever (not just until that blood moon prophecy proves true and we peter out like this old planet.)

And I hear people say these times are bad, the days are evil, and the future worse, but I don’t listen because these are the only times I have, this now, this today, this blood moon span, and if God didn’t design me for these days, well, don’t you know, He’d have plopped me down on Little House in the Prairie where I could have lost a few babies to dysentery within the first year of their lives and labored from sunrise to sundown every day just to prepare food and wash clothes and I can’t sew worth spit so, wouldn’t my family have been in rags?

No, God designed me for this time, this blood moon time, this hurtling toward the end everyone feeling the urgency and the pressure of the throes of global labor time.

Since He loves me, I choose to believe it when He says I’m also equipped to survive, to thrive, to be alive through these days and to love, too. To know joy and strength even when fatherly, funny men falter,fail. And if you’re here with me, which you are because you’re reading these words, don’t you know He designed and equipped you, too, to face the blood moon, no matter what it brings.

So say with me, as the Psalmist said, “But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors! Make your face shine on your servant; save me in your steadfast love!” Psalm 31:14-16

Tether your heart to His great beating love and hit your knees, listening to Him, praying for our children, our loved ones, our neighbors, our enemies – even the really bad ones, knowing that you’ve been called to this moment, to this today, to these priestly duties during this blood-moon-fallen-stars mess of an age.

And when we grasp that we were designed for these times, placed in these days, set in this time and space by a loving, intelligent, faithful God, when we get that our lives are no mistake and that we aren’t victims of the evildoers but faithful warriors assigned by God, when we get THAT

then we can keep our eyes open as we roller coaster to the inevitable big bang conclusion that was determined from the very start and be grateful, truly grateful, that He chose us to live in the days after the cross, in the wake of the resurrection, in the coming of the Holy Spirit, in the creation of the church, in the building of the kingdom, in the fulfillment of prophecy, in the climax of His story, in the hours before His return.

Oh, yes, loved ones, we are not ill fated, we are not woeful or to be pitied, we are not mismatched with our times; no, for God is loving and sovereign and He sees everything.

We are the ones who get to witness what it’s all been about, to know the filling of His Spirit, to see Him work His wonders, to receive His provision in the moment, to thrive on manna, to endure persecution, to praise through pressure, to point the way, to speak truth to power, and to stand on that judgment day and declare – yes, yes you were told the truth of Christ because we told it, we proclaimed it, we mouthed it with our dying breath so God is just in all His judgments when He brings the full weight of His revenge down on your terrorizing souls.

We were designed for these days. Pay attention. God is moving, loved ones, and we will see.

Were you born in the wrong time? Here’s how you know: http://t.co/zqsFtuZsek #bloodmoon #BloodMoonEclipse #billcosby #amwriting

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) September 29, 2015