THE DAYS ARE COMING!

Luke 17:22-30 (NRSV) - Then he said to the disciples, "The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. 23 They will say to you, 'Look there!' or 'Look here!' Do not go, do not set off in pursuit. 24 For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. 25 But first he must endure much suffering and be rejected by this generation. 26 Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too it will be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 They were eating and drinking, and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed all of them. 28 Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, 29 but on the day that Lot left Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from heaven and destroyed all of them 30 --it will be like that on the day that the Son of Man is revealed.


Left: One of many artists' renderings of the Second Coming of Christ



The days are coming when you’ll long the Son of Man to see,
        but do not heed the lying claims or false rumors that he
is here or there, for as a lightning flash lights up the sky,
        so will the coming of the Son of Man be to the eye.
The day of his revealing will come unexpectedly.
        For many, who are unprepared, destruction there will be.
As in the days of Noah, when the flood drowned nearly all,
        and in the days of Lot, when all the Sodomites did fall.
The people in both cases had been living normally,
        not knowing their extinction would be coming suddenly.
These words are not intended to condemn us from the start,
        but to exhort us always to be ready ---mind and heart.
For Jesus’ Second Coming, whether it be soon or late,
        demands we live each day as his disciples, while we wait.