Reflection-Visions of the End

In the 1400s, artists depicted Doom. Jan Van Eyck painted grisly naked bodies, deformed and in torment, with a skull-like figure hovering over them. Hans Memling depicted the Last Judgment with bodies flung about; a demon seizes a helpless man by the ankle and smashes a foot on his neck. The people of Europe had just come through one of the most hellish centuries in memory—war, famine, and bubonic plague had decimated Europe. They had seen dead bodies. They had seen people starve. The artwork reflected that desolation. Where was God in all that tribulation? The mild Jesus of the thirteenth century’s artists was gone. The art of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries tended to portray God as harsh, judgmental, and aloof. If you needed help, go ask his mother or one of the other saints. God wasn’t likely to help you.

Where are we now? When we hear Jesus talk this week about tribulations and stars falling from the sky, is this more real than it used to be? Could we be wiped out by war, or famine, or disease? When the prophet Daniel speaks of a “time unsurpassed in distress,” does that feel more like a possibility?

I know a young woman who lost two of her grandparents in one day during the COVID-19 pandemic. The immediate response was, “God, where are you in this?” If desolation goes on for a hundred years, as it did in the fourteenth century, will our perspective of God change? Will we believe that God is likely to help us?

Jesus says that we cannot know the day or the hour of the end. But with the psalmist, we ask for the grace to hang onto a belief in a good end, believing God will not abandon us to Sheol, the land of the dead. God alone is our inheritance!

Consider/Discuss

• How has your perspective about the end-times changed since five or ten years ago? Have recent tribulations altered your perception of God? If so, how? If not, why not?
• Many recent movies and shows deal with apocalyptic scenarios. Have you seen one that has impacted you? How do the protagonists deal with the end-of-the-world trials that they face? Where is/isn’t faith in God present in those end-times situations? Six centuries from now, how will people look back and see how our artists are depicting the Divine in the twenty-first century?

Living and Praying with the Word

Jesus, from your words, you appear to have a long perspective. While we measure time in days and years, you see things in centuries and eons. If heaven and earth pass away, will your words not also pass away? That is hard for us to envision. Give us your eyesight this day. The end of the world is a scary prospect and we cannot handle that without your help. Strengthen us this day for whatever the future brings. In the midst of our fears, be our Peace. When trials come, be our Rock. No matter what happens, show us the path of life and allow us to glorify you forever.