Daily Lesson for February 15, 2019

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from 2 Timothy chapter 3 verses 10 through 15:

10 Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11my persecutions, and my suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. 12Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. 13But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived. 14But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

Paul is writing at a time of real darkness in the Roman Empire, as madmen are rulers and the world seems given over to arrogance and cruelty.  “You must understand this,” Paul wrote, “in the last days distressing times will come.”

In the last days.  That is a provocative phrase, and unfortunately one too often misunderstood.  We have misinterpreted it to solely mean the final days of the earth.

But there are last days of all kinds. And the one we experience over and over again is the end of an era, the last days of an age now passing away. 

We live in such a time. What we see in the world are the death rattles of an older, crueler age and the birth pangs a new.  Some have called this the birth pangs of a third age of Reconstruction or a third Great Awakening — an even Greater Awakening.

Paul tells us that in the last days it shall not be easy. Trials and persecution are bound to come for those who live for truth. And wickedness goes from bad to worse. This is the old age clutching to hold on.

But Paul counsels courage. He models patience. He embodies hope. He pleads for love. 

“As for you,” he says, “continue in what you have learned and firmly believed.”

What we have learned is endurance. And what we believe in is a kingdom come.  We wait for it. We wait and we hope and we hold on until finally we hear the words of promise come to pass:

“The old things have passed away; behold, the new has come into being.”