Fr. Frank Majka, SJ – The Bridge

Still Here

It’s May 22 and the world’s still here. It seems no one has been snatched up to heaven by the Rapture (when, some fundamentalist Christians believe, the true believers in Jesus will disappear from the earth, leaving only sinners behind to face God’s wrath). It was all supposed to happen yesterday. But it didn’t, despite one preacher’s calculations.

Why is it foolish to put credence in such predictions? For starters, there have been a lot of them over the years and they all have a perfect record of being wrong. Not only that, Jesus explicitly taught that no one but God knows when the end will come (Mark 13). It is simply not for us to know the day or the hour.

But, in my opinion, their main failing is that they make escape from the world the whole point of point of following Christ. But Jesus explicitly asked his Father not to take his followers out of the world, but to protect them from evil (John 17).

To top it off, Christ is here, laboring to make our world the place God created it to be, and we’re meant to labor with him to that end. That’s why we belong here still, and that’s why I look forward to many more months and, I hope, years of living here in this world, where I believe Christ wants us to stay.