Mtr Kelli Joyce

"...you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When they say, ‘There is peace and security’, then sudden destruction will come upon them... So then, let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake."

Dear Friends in Christ,

I laughed a little when I saw that this morning's readings were about the sudden arrival of the day of the Lord. You see, ;ast night some friends and I watched, of all things, the 2000 film adaptation of "Left Behind." There were a great many things about it that stood out as dated, now that more than twenty years have passed since the film's production, but I was actually more struck by how similar some of it felt to what we're going through now. People haven't disappeared in an instant, leaving clothes and dental fillings behind, but the world is in chaos nonetheless, and it has come upon us suddenly.

Please let me be clear: I'm not saying that our present crisis is part of the end of days. But it is an apocalypse in the most literal sense - it is a revelation, an uncovering of things that had been hidden. We are seeing the ways that our society is not built to protect life. We are seeing the ways that our assumptions about the durability of our way of life were not as well founded as we believed. Things that seemed impossible in February are the realities of May.

God is present in these things we don't expect. As Christians, we are called to be ready at all times for the present order to be upended in one way or another. And we are called to see such upheaval not as mere catastrophe, but as the potential site of redemption and transformation and new beginnings. We cannot choose what will come to us like a thief in the night, but we can stay awake, and we can "put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation." We can trust that Christ will never leave us or forsake us.

In peace,
Mtr Kelli