About a week ago I was driving downtown to a coffee shop listening to a new mix CD I’d made.  Mix albums are an art.  Selecting your tracks is only one part of the process.  What can make an album truly great is song order.  The whole tone and success of a CD for me can be determined in the order.  It can’t jump around too much.  It can’t be alternating between fast songs and slow songs.  As I was listening to this album in the car, I was enjoying a track toward the end, with about three songs after it.  Thinking ahead to the tracks that awaited me, I wasn’t too excited.  It wasn’t that they were bad songs.  If they were, they wouldn’t be on the CD.  They just weren’t as good as several of the tracks that preceded them.

When I thought about his, I realized that I often judge the content of my mix CDs by how well they end.  If I can be increasingly excited about what is left to come as the CD progresses, then it is a successful album to me.  As I chased this train of thought a little bit further, it hit me how often this principle transcends into other things in life.  A bad ending to a story will, at the very least, be a weakness to the story, and at the worst it will completely undo it.  When you go see fireworks on the Fourth of July, all the splendor of what you’re seeing is eclipsed only by the expectation that the grandest part of the show is yet to come at the conclusion of it all.  The best Star Wars movie, “The Empire Strikes Back”, is defined by its ending when we discover (spoiler alert) that Darth Vader is Luke’s father.  The ending of a story is the culmination of everything that came before.  Endings give us the light to see the ultimate purpose behind everything and to understand their function.  We eagerly look toward the end in order to gain this clarity as well as to see the story end happily.

My life has become extremely focused on eschatology in the last few months.  This is true in the academic sense in that I’ve been studying the millenium and whether Christ’s return will be premillenial, postmillenial, or amillenial.  But the thoughts the mix CD inspired were more related to eschatology in the broader sense, and what I mean by that is despite all the numerous views on Christ’s second coming that there are and all the debates that surround it, one thing remains constant in all these theological systems: Jesus is coming back.  In realizing that so many things are dependent on their endings, I understood that this is not only equally true of the story of God, but ultimately and especially true of it.  The most important ending is the end of all things.

The entire Bible is eschatological.  It points that final day when God will create a new heaven and a new earth, right all wrongs, and glorify his children.  This became very apparent to me in the last few months when I caught a clue that the entire hope of the apostles was based on the life to come and not this life.  They were constantly looking forward, looking through the trials of the present to the ending they knew would be truly magnificient.  One of my favorite verses as of late has been 1 Peter 1:13- “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”  Peter’s encouraging believers by telling them to make the entire gravitational pull of their hearts the day when Christ returns.  Paul’s endurance during trials was his assurance that he would be with Christ again, and that that joy would completely overshadow his trials now and make them incomparable (Romans 8:18, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18).  Paul encourages the Colossians to look upward and set their minds on things above, where Christ is (Colossians 3:1-2).  God points Isaiah to the day when all things will be made new and wolf and lamb shall graze together (Isaiah 65:17-25).  When Asaph was flabbergasted and distraught that he suffered while the wicked seemed to prosper (Psalm 73:1-15), he found comfort in discerning their end and his own (verses 16-28).  There is a future for the believer because Christ is king and thus he will prevail and all will be well for his children.  This is what Stephen saw as he was stoned to death, and he died with joy saying “‘Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the  Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’” (Acts 7:56)

This forward-pointing is everything to the Christian.  Jesus’s sermon on the mount has one central thrust: “‘Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.’” (Matthew 24:42)  Jesus is coming back, so don’t fall under the seduction of this temporal world that we live in (see also 1 John 2:15).  Live for that day at all times.  My other favorite verse right now is 2 Timothy 2:4- “No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.”  Christians are soldiers on behalf of Christ, armed with the good news of God’s grace and not with physical weapons.  I’ve opened myself up to be challenged by this verse in conjuction with all the preceding ones.  Is the magnetic north of my affections the day when this temporal world comes down like a veil and Christ returns to rule?  Again, for the Bible authors, the assurance of Christ’s kingship and his return to rule for all time was the bedrock of their joy.  Everything for them pointed to that day.

My struggle has been clear: am I as hopeful of that day and thus as joyful as the apostles were?  If not, why?  What civilian pursuits am I entangled in which displace such a focus?  What are some very practical and subtle things I do each and every day that make me love this life a little too much?  What can I be doing to look more eagerly for Christ’s return?  Do I long and pant for his return above all things, or do I think it would be convenient for him to wait just long enough until I can get married and have a couple of kids?  Recently I’ve been scouting out good deals on TVs.  I would absolutely love to get a decently-sized TV along with a Blu-Ray player.  I was a Blu-Ray skeptic until I actually watched a movie in the format and…wow.  That’s a big investment, and I really don’t have that kind of money right now.  But honestly the money isn’t really the issue for me.  In order to make such a purchase in the future, I’d have to do some serious soul searching.  The way I put it to my roommate is that I’m cautious of anything that’s going to make our couch a little bit more comfortable.  I need to be careful of anything that’s going to encourage me to indulge myself rather than encourage me to help build the kingdom of God.  Comfort typically hasn’t been the most effective way of reorienting a person’s mind to Christ and his coming.  It’s hard to be eager for death like Paul was when comfort is plentious.  Paul said that to live is Christ and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21).  He groaned to leave this life and be with Christ (2 Corinthians 5:1-12), and he saw value in living this life only in being able to tell others about Jesus and to instruct them in his teachings (Philippians 1:24-26).  But he didn’t do this reluctantly.  He did it joyfully because though he wanted to depart, the certainty of God’s triumph allowed him to be content doing whatever he could in this life to save others.

A story’s ending makes or breaks everything that leads up to it.  A good and happy ending clarifies the confusion, gives hope in tragedies, and accentuates the joys because they all coalesce into a glorious conclusion.  This life is meant to be viewed in light of the end.  The life Jesus calls us to, the building of his kingdom, necessitates this vantage point.   For only when we trust in the riches to come will we forsake the riches of this life (Matthew 6:19-21).  Only when we confidently wait for the comforts of heaven will we look past the trials of this world (Romans 8:18).  And only when we realize that fullness of joy is found in God’s presence alone (Psalm 16:11) and in being with him forever will we stop trying to be satisfied with the transient things of this world.  Jesus is coming back.  Let everything you do in life be done with this in mind.

How can I gain and preserve this precious treasure of placing the entirety of my hope in Christ?  It is valuable, precious, and fragile above all other things.  Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.  Look above and beyond this life.