Atmosphere or Atmosfear?

[HKHaugan]

There’s Atmosphere and There’s Atmosfear

       Hurricanes, pandemics and their variants, fires consuming the landscape, chaotic evacuations, illegal immigration including who knows what, political division at the breaking point, religious institutions scrambling for survival…….so where is it all headed and what can we do as believers?  Of course, there will arise a series of prophets who will forecast doom and gloom and assault us with pictures of the end times which causes more incendiary voices to raise their volume and increase the sense of hopelessness.  How easy it is to fall prey .. all that and just resign ourselves to the inevitable that this atmosphere showers upon us.  That’s atmosfear, secusphere.

       But there is another view.  The fact that people who have accepted the call of Jesus know the end times started when Jesus came and told us about them.  But we don’t make our plans to live everyday in fear of the end times, worrying about them, dwelling on them, but in the ‘now time’ each of us has been given.  The Lord is simply letting us know that He prevails in every generation and that everything in this world will come to an end, but the future is His eternal reign in His Kingdom.  We are part of that.  Now is the hour of our salvation…”Truly, truly, I tell you, the hour is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live (Jn.5:25).”  That’s atmosphere, sacrosphere.

       Yes, there will be tribulation.  There will be signs in the sky.  Revelation does tell us that the consummation of all existence is now going through the pangs of growth and its images given through John will take place but, and please get this, but it is the ‘now’ each of us are in that Jesus calls us to do His work which is to believe in Him and what He has given us in His Word.  But that’s positive information.  That gift is knowing Him, serving Him where we are and bringing others to Him.  This is not a cumbersome task, a gloomy doomy survival time where we gather in despair like the two men on the road to Emmaus caught in the ‘today-like’ atmosphere of their world.  Remember them?  After they realized it was the risen Jesus who had explained everything about Himself to them, they were overjoyed and rushed to tell everyone about Him.

       The focus of Scripture is on the victorious return of Jesus, the joy of His Kingdom as the Heavenly Jerusalem descends on earth.  We pray for His Kingdom to come on earth as it is in Heaven.  We pray for the daily bread, the spiritual feeding He gives through His Word and His Presence in the Spirit.

       Maybe this passage from Proverbs 2 will help us refocus.

“1My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you,

2turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding—

3indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding,

4and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure,

5then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.

6For the LORD gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.”

 

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Pr.9:10}” which leads me to see the world is the kingdom of fear.  Consequently, there is more fear existing with those who don’t know the Lord than those that do.  Let me fear the God of love, the God of compassion and understanding, the fear of the One, the Light of the world, who can send me to darkness but desires my faith and not my death. That’s in fact “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father (Rom.8:15),” “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his faithful servants (Ps.116:15),” for “Thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.”