Faith, Hope and Love for Our Future

Weeks ago, I crossed the half-century barrier, turning 50. An 84-year-old parishioner living in a nursing home gave me this knowing birthday greeting: “Well, it’s all downhill from here.”

Indeed, no matter how healthfully I eat, how vigorously I work out at the gym, how routinely I challenge my mind with complex brain exercises, I know that time will conquer my mind and body. Eventually. But my disciplines of mind and body will keep things running as well as possible, as long as possible.

And this is one key of good stewardship: To do the best you can with what you have as long as you can. Many of us reach the 50 mark only to wake up to our mortality, as if we hadn’t really been aware of death all along. We regret and repent of the abuse we’ve heaped on our finances, our diets, our bodies and our minds for the previous 50 years.

We vow to do better with the gifts that God has given us – our bodies, our time, our relationships, our finances. We pray to God for guidance and strength, and most of us do better, after all.

As a race, the human family is facing such a crisis of conscience. After pretending for millennia that we can exploit our natural resources forever, continue to engage in violence as the first and best response to conflict, continuing to fail to love our neighbors as ourselves, we now know we must change. Or die an early death.

Soaring gas and food prices, global climate change, endless war and conflict, deficits, debt and economic crises are just the symptoms of our bad thinking and bad living.

In the face of such dire problems, many in our world are fatalistic – even Christians! Many of us agree with my 84-year-old parishioner’s prognosis: “Well, it’s all downhill from here.” Pessimism has driven the surge of “rapture” preaching and “left behind” theorists. I fear it given license for Christians to decide to do nothing in the face of the world’s problems – to wait it out until the end. What a cowardly, selfish, faithless response.

Jesus said repeatedly that no one knows the day and time of the end. He did say there would be signs. Are these the signs? (Maybe. Maybe not. Doomsayers have been wrong in every age before.) Jesus said we should not be troubled. But he did not say we should be complacent. As Christians, we face the future with hope, trusting that all is in God’s hands, and also trusting that God has always called faithful men and women to engage in the world, to fight evil, to work for justice and to announce the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God. At this point, we need to turn to God in repentance, seek God’s guidance and live with new purpose and vigor.

At 50, I know my own earthly mortality is approaching, it is inevitable. But there is nothing inevitable in the immanent demise of the human race. God is still at work among us.

--Rob Blezard, editor and webmaster.
Reprint rights gladly given to congregations for nonprofit, local use. Just include this notice: “Copyright (c) 2008, Rev. Robert Blezard, www.stewardshipoflife.org. Used by permission.”

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