Stability

"Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words."
1 Thessalonians 4:17-18

I don't know how much I have to say about this. Only that the best encouragement any person can receive is knowing that this isn't all there is. There's life after death. Love after pain. Community after corruption. Peace after anxiety. Stability after change. There is a day coming when I will, with the collective body of Christ, look my Savior in the eyes and know that I'm home. And in light of that, what can't I handle on this earth?

I'm not in some emotional intersection of life, I'm not undergoing any undo relational turmoil, but what I am experiencing is the ever-growing realization that life changes. People come and go, my sphere of influence ebbs and flows, I'm on cloud nine one day and scared of next week the next, but I can be confident that the God who is king at the telos of all things is the God who said "never will I leave you, never will I forsake you." The God who loves me enough to sacrifice his Son for me. It's the simplest message in Christianity, but it is always exactly the one I need to hear. Where will I be in a year? Quite literally: God only knows. Who will I be with? What will I be doing? How much money will I have? I couldn't answer one of those questions. But rather than be filled with anxiety concerning those questions, I refer back to the words of Paul:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;

    we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:31-39

Come, Lord Jesus.