Week 4, Day 2: The End

On Saturday, I heard a very touching interview with Vicki Kennedy, the widow of Senator Edward T. Kennedy.

One of the questions she fielded was about a sense of "the end" during those days between his cancer diagnosis and his death. "Was there a moment in the last few months that you looked at each other and knew these were the last few months?" Scott Simon asked Mrs. Kennedy.

It's a question that is answered more in the asking than the telling, because it's something we all want to know: will I have the same sense when my life is nearly over? Will I have time to finish things and make things right?

Having come face to face with death myself through my own cancer diagnosis, it's a question I asked myself a hundred times. If these are my last days, am I living them the way I should?

This is not just a question for our deathbeds, however. This is an Advent question. Jesus will come again, and if our days on earth don't end individually in our own death, it will only be because Jesus has ushered in the end of all days on earth collectively by returning as He promised.

Since no one knows when either of those days will be, the only logical conclusion is to live every day as if sensing this might be our last. This is precisely why God has not told us our last day, even though he knows it as well as our first. He wants us to find certainty in the uncertainty; to live by faith everyday we wait for him.

"When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?" Luke 18:8