As [Jesus] came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” – Mark 13:1-5

The Suspense is Killing Me…

Have you ever read a book and just had to peek at the last few pages to see how it ends?

Maybe it was a romance… Maybe it was a mystery… and it was so intense that you couldn’t wait to find out what happened at the end? Maybe you just had to know if the two people get together…. Or maybe you just needed to know if the “good guys” win… in the end.

Every once in a while, I have found myself doing that because somehow it made it easier to keep going, if I knew that everything turned out okay in the end.

Fear of the Unknown

Seems that real life isn’t that different, is it? One of the things that scares us the most is the unknown.

In their conversation with Jesus on the Mount of Olives, Peter, James, John, and Andrew wanted to know how things would end before they had even begun their work of spreading the gospel of peace to people of all nations. Jesus refused to tell them how or when their world would end.

He did not believe that revealing the end to them would help them be better disciples or more effective evangelists. Would knowing the end of the story have strengthened their faith in any way?

In some ways we are not unlike those first followers of Jesus. Most of us have moments when we are curious to know how and when things in this life are going to come to an end.

While We Wait – Living Faithfully

However, we do know how the story ends, we know that Jesus was raised from the dead so that we could have life and have it more abundantly. But let’s not stand around waiting for the end. Let’s be about the task of doing the work of God now. The future is open. What matters is not that we know the end of the story but that we live faithfully in the meantime.