Living in Apocalyptic Times

Well friends, it’s official, we are living in apocalyptic times.

I’m not talking about I Am Legend, Mad Max, or the Left Behind series (which let me be clear: is a poor theology of the “End Times.”)

But I mean “apocalyptic” in the truest sense of the word, in its actual New Testament usage. The Greek noun apokalypsis means “revelation, disclosure.”

Truly truly, we’re living in revealing times aren’t we? It seems like the veil or curtain is being pulled back: on our culture, countries, churches, and our hearts. We are starting to see things for what they actually are.

God bless all our governing leaders. And yet, we see how little control they actually have. We see how fragile our market economies can be. We see what a world where entertainment and sports (like my beloved NBA) looks like, when they stop, or slow down, and we’re no longer as distracted.

And of course, people’s hearts are being revealed. We are seeing how people respond to crises—with calm or anxiety, with fear or faith, with openness or closedness, with generosity or scarcity. And if you’re like me, you’ve been surprised to see who has been acting the way they have been acting. Maybe you’ve even surprised yourself with what has been revealed to you, about you.

In the scriptures, the greatest apocalypse (revelation) is none other than this:

“Jesus is Lord.”

The arrival of the one true living God in Jesus of Nazareth––God-in-the-flesh, full of grace and truth––totally disrupted the world, and still does.

And yet, with this ongoing disruption comes the ultimate invitation: to truly live as we were made to, in right relationship with our God, our world, our neighbour, and ourselves. This means living a life marked by love, joy, peace, faith, and hope.

And so I want to leave you with 1 practice and 2 questions.

Practice: Praying the Lord’s Prayer.

• This has been my practice since the start of Lent, and it’s grown all the more important now. Because Jesus is Lord, I can’t imagine a better way to live into that revelation than praying this prayer, connected with millions of others around the world, and countless others down through the ages.
• I pray it 3 times a day: morning, midday, evening.
• And I also focus on a different line of the prayer each day of the week, to meditate on it throughout the day.

Questions:

• Q: What is God revealing to you right now (about God, yourself, our world) through certain disruptions?
• Q: What is God revealing to you (about God, yourself, our world) right now through certain invitations?

So in this season my friends, it’s being revealed all the more that Jesus is Lord. Which means: COVID-19, disease, fear, uncertainty, the hectic pace of life we’ve been used to, and all the other things we’ve made lord in our lives—are not.

We truly are living in apocalyptic times. But it’s not the end of world.

Michael Yang is the campus pastor of Tapestry Nights

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen