Apocalypse No(w)

On October 25, 1962, I was sitting in the den of our home on Lawrence Ave in Marseilles, Illinois, with my mother, father, and two sisters staring at a small black and white TV. We were all transfixed as the announcer gave us the play-by-play of the events in front of us. We were in the middle of a Cold War raging between the United States and the Soviet Union. Visceral, nasty interrogatories and accusations had been flying between the world’s two major nuclear powers since World War Two. We had Nikita Khrushchev, the shoe-pounding head of the Soviet Union, and on the other side John F. Kennedy of the United States. In the fall of 1962, the Soviet Union had started building medium-range ballistic nuclear missile sites in Cuba, just 90 miles off of the Florida coast. We had all seen the aerial photos from the U-2 spy plane, so we knew the threat was real.

Now it was coming to a head, right before our eyes. President Kennedy had enacted a quarantine (the interesting use of “quarantine” in place of “blockade” technically averted a declaration of war) of Cuba and made it clear that the US intended to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. He raised our nuclear readiness to DEFCON 2; it was the only confirmed time in US history. It was reported that one-eighth of SAC’s over 1,400 bombers were airborne, and 145 intercontinental ballistic missiles stood on ready alert, some of which targeted Cuba, others at the Soviet Union.

What we were watching wasn’t an “unscripted” reality show with volunteer contestants, it was real life, and we watched it as it unfolded. The Soviet cargo ship Kislovodsk approached the quarantine zone. It was like watching paint dry as the end of the world slowly crept forward. If the Kislovodsk crossed into the zone, it was game on or the end of life as we knew it. At the last minute, the Kislovodsk discontinued its route and turned back. Nuclear war was averted. In my mind, this was yesterday. It was one of the most terrifying moments of my childhood. Less than twenty years after Hiroshima, my dad, a WWII veteran, knew the devastation of one nuclear bomb and couldn’t fathom the effect of hundreds of them exploding in rapid sequence. My fear was an extrapolation of his but amplified through youth and ignorance.

I get overwhelmed at times by cultural change and world politics. It seems that, as a world, we have passed the tipping point of dystopia. But we haven’t. God is still in control, and we are right on plan. Just because I don’t know the plan doesn’t mean it isn’t happening right on schedule. I remember October 24, but I no longer fear it. Age gives me the wisdom of hindsight.

Matthew 24:6, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.”

If you woke up today, and I assume you did because you are reading this, God has something specific He wants you to do. There is someone in your world that needs you. There is a person whose life is on a collision course with yours. Don’t be consumed with tomorrow when today is so important. Don’t lose the joy of living today because you fear tomorrow. God has created a great life for you; you need to live it. You can’t do that when you lose focus. Life becomes complex and distracting when you major in the temporal and minor in the eternal.

Matthew 24:14, “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.”

Remember, God loves you unconditionally. It is the very essence of His nature to love you. God created you for His pleasure. He does not get pleasure out of you living in fear. Problems will come, and problems will go, but God’s love for you is unchanging, rock-solid, and eternal.

I am studying the book “Gently and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers.” Several of the chapters emphasize that the very nature of God is to show mercy out of His heart. Not mercy in a detached, rules-based, unemotional sense, but a deeply caring, love-based desire for us. A dysfunctional world, or a dysfunctional life, can hide or shadow how amazingly God loves us and pursues us for His pleasure.

Revelations 4:11, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory, honor, and power, for you created all things, and for your pleasure, they were created and exist.”

There is a lot of work to be done. Our work is to be obedient to what God has put in front of us. Because he loves us, we know that He does not want us to live in fear. When we fear, we have taken our eye off the one who holds us in His hand. We have forgotten the security gained through His death on the cross. I know there will be tough times, but remember you are loved by the God of the universe who created you for His pleasure.

Daniel 12:13, “But as for you, go your way to the end; then you will enter into rest and rise again for your allotted portion at the end of the age.”