Your Time's Up!

"If I knew Jesus were coming at 4 pm today, I would be out there in the field playing football with my friends because its probably there I would get to see him up close". These were the words my godfather shared to me, when I was just beginning on getting up on my feet from a spiritual renewal. That came after I went through a crisis which really ruptured me to give birth to what I am now.

I used to be so afraid of the end of days. I am not a Biblical scholar who claims to know when it will come. But I believe, that it will come. Some years ago, when I was a teenager, I would watch the free rupture movies of start up sectarian Christian groups. That scared me even to my dreams. They were preaching the same thing, the coming of life to an end.

But I believe in the salvation by grace. I believe in the resurrection into eternal life. I hold that promise of salvation with faith in Jesus who redeemed me and forgave my sins by dying on the cross. Shall I be afraid that my time will be up someday, soon or later? I also believe that my life is a gift by grace, that I did not choose be in this life, yet I found myself in it.

I am not perfect, I am a sinner like anyone else. I fall, fail and falter in my journey of faith. But as I said, I enjoy this life that is blessed me because of that mustard-seed-size of faith that I have been saved. I look forward to that eternal peace, and that ecstatic bliss if it would come here on this world. But this world, has no space for that, because its people has no sense of bringing heaven into this world.

I used to be afraid of death, of dying, because I do not want to lose my love ones. But when I realized that even if I depart from this world, those I will leave behind will be in the shelter of God's wings. I could not hold away from the world, because I had plans and dreams that were not fulfilled yet, because I had in my memory things of the past, both good and vain, that I could not withdraw from.

However, light shone on me, that it is in dying from the world that we are renewed. It is in emptying that we are filled. It is in letting go that we are held by the hands of a greater Power to make us soar. It is in looking at that blinding light that we see truth. It is in having our calloused stone hearts shattered that we are given a flesh one.

We have to be ruptured, we have to die of our old self. That's a truth to live a full life in this world as we journey to our eternal home. We have to be consumed in fire to be pure so that we can be ready to join the creator. Dying is about living, and living does not end in dying. To live in faith is to love for all that it means in godly ways.

I am saddened by the "good news" that some claiming Christian groups teach about the end of days. Their good news preaches of doom, scaring people, for them to run to God, by joining their flocks and offering their money to their churches. They flood the anxious with Biblical texts to fit their knowledge, as if God's wisdom about the times can be calculated by human understanding. The Jesus that I know does not speak in their language.

Jesus speaks of God's unconditional love, infinite mercy, and eternal promises, a guarantee of a fullness in life and a reward of eternal life. Metaporically and allegorically, Jesus preached of the meaning of life, of making wise decisions and choices and of living a life for others in godly love. When Jesus talked of damnation, tribulations or judgment, it brought spiritual consciousness and reconciliation but not anxiety.

Has Jesus ever spoken to any sinner, that he or she is bound to doom? Where are these end-of-days preachers coming from? Their rhetorics are bold and fierce, as if presenting facts and total knowledge of God's mind and will. How many of them have passed this world, and passed the days they attempted to dictate on God's calendar, in reference to the semiotics and hermeneutics of numbers that men constructed? Yet, none of their predictions, revised several times, ever happened.

To these claiming prophets who have amassed great amount of wealth, I say, your time is up too by then, be that May 21, 2011, tonight, tomorrow, next year, on the third day, in the next 7000 years. Your gift of prophecy is not spiritually affirming. Remember too that everything you have here in this world is worthless and with whatever you have spoken and done you shall be judged on the final day. If you are so sure of what you are preaching, give up what you keep for yourself to the poor people of this world, to those whom you judged as damned that in the remaining hours of their lives they will have a taste of heaven by your hands.

Happy living everyone! Life is a beautiful gift from God to live and enjoy with all those God blessed us to love in all our days of our life, until that hour comes to us. Give your biggest smile and hug, for those also mean heaven to some.