In the meantime...don't delay!

Years and years ago, way back in the early ‘70s, I had a vision of the end time. It was probably no coincidence that the world itself was looking pretty terminal at that point. John and Bobby Kennedy had both been buried by then, along with Martin Luther King Jr. Boys I knew were so afraid of being drafted for Vietnam that their hands shook when they dialed the combinations on their mailboxes at the campus post office. Meanwhile, the rest of us were making all the noise we could, taking over administration buildings and marching in the streets. A girl our age had been shot dead by National Guardsmen during a protest at Kent State. We had all seen the picture.
One night in the middle of all this there was a terrific thunderstorm. I lay on the bed in my dorm room watching the sky light up with blast after blast of raw electricity. Even though it was way past midnight, the sky was luminous, with all the nightlights of Atlanta hitting the low clouds and thudding back down again. The color was greenish brown -- not a right color for the sky to be, which made me feel a little queasy inside.
I could not sleep. I had not slept well in weeks. I did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I did not even know if I wanted to grow up in such a violent, crazy world. Then I heard myself say, "Come, Lord Jesus" -- just like that -- and then I said it again: "Come, Lord Jesus." I remember thinking I should be afraid to say something like that, but I wasn’t. I was relieved to go ahead and ask for the end. Please come back and finish this thing up. We are no good at it. We have never been any good at it. Come, Lord Jesus, and don’t delay.
Then I looked out the window and saw (imagined?) a bright spot in the sky that grew bigger and bigger, with clouds boiling all around the center of it like big curling waves. Then the head of a beautiful white horse pushed through them, then the front legs, then the chest, until finally this gleaming creature was galloping right toward me with a rider on its back who was too bright for me to see. There was a lot going on in the background too, like the wake behind a giant speedboat, but I never got a good look at that because I could not take my eyes off the horse and rider.
It lasted only for a second or two. Then I stopped imagining (seeing?) and the thunderstorm moved on. I fell asleep, survived college, grew up, got a job -- but that vision of the end remains vivid for me. It is embarrassingly literal, I know. In my part of the country, it might be called a vision of the rapture, and there are plenty of people who would be happy to tell me exactly where it comes in the final lineup of events.
I remember something one of my professors told me once, about how the second coming of Christ was an idea cooked up by some church father with only two fingers. The truth, he said, is that Christ comes again, and again, and again -- that God has placed no limit on coming to the world, but is always on the way to us here and now. The only thing we are required to do is to notice -- to watch, to keep our eyes peeled.
Go ahead and make the decision, write the letter, get the help you need, find someone to love, give yourself away. Why waste your time making preparations for an end time you cannot predict? Live prepared. Live a caught-up life, not a put-off life, so that wherever you are -- standing in a field or grinding at the mill, or just going about the everyday business of your life -- you are ready for God, for whatever happens next, not afraid but wide awake, watching for the Lord who never tires of coming to the world.
Who knows? Ours may be the generation that finally sees him ride in on the clouds, or we may meet him the same way generations before us have -- one by one by one, as we close our eyes for the last time. Either way our lives are in God’s hands. Either way, God leaves the living of them to us. To God be all honor and glory, now and forever.
-Barbara Brown Taylor