Some of this morning’s clouds were displaying lens-y tendencies…
It was a pleasant enough morning walk, and still quite warm for the time of year – although my birthday fleece may have made it feel warmer than it really was. We did a thing with the car so I walked one way from home and Janet walked back home the other way. We were, after all, using it for local exercise. The trail was fairly quiet this morning.
In Sunday’s Lectionary, from 1 Thessalonians, there’s a sense of urgency. You don’t know when the day of the Lord is coming, but it feels as if it’s soon. Don’t get drunk, don’t sleep. I’m not sure what the concrete meaning of ‘don’t sleep’ might be – perhaps the readers knew only too well – but literally being sleep-deprived for more than a short while is surely not being recommended. ISTR on the Manchester soup run long ago, a number of the people were full of apocalyptic language, and it crossed my mind that some of them had had a personal apocalypse. The day of the Lord, the reckoning, has meaning not only for the end of everything, but also in personal and communal life. Some of the things Jesus said about the kingdom of heaven would have made sense if they were about the community in that age.
Is the ‘day of the Lord’ good news or bad news? How does that feel in your guts?
And how do we respond to 1 Thessalonians as the years pass, and the sense of urgency wears away? Maybe it’s worth bearing in mind that the reckoning for individuals and communities can come at any time.