“A thing is about to happen here that has not happened since the Elder Days. The Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong.” | Gandalf the White | The Two Towers [movie version]

Watching these ~~ 25 lovely young humans (pictured below), so full of life and energy got me thinking about Eternity. All of them are standing on that precarious dip between childhood and maturity; on the brink of “real” Life…or so we’ve been told. We’ve bought into the lie that “real” life begins after high school. After college. After your first “real” job. After marriage. After your purchase your first home. After children. And on and on because that’s how lies work; they never stop until the Truth breaks in like a thunderbolt, unmasking the lie in all its shrewd wickedness.

“Real” life begins now. We can’t be waiting about for things because we’ll “wait” ourselves into our graves, and discover, much too late, that while we were busy waiting for “real” life to begin, real Life was busy passing us by. We’ve “waited” long enough, lovely humans, and it’s killed us. It’s time to start living. It’s time to stop dying and it’s high time to start living. Eternity’s hurtling toward us much faster than some of us would like to think. As we stand upon the brink of a New Year, may we remember that the Most High made our souls for Eternity and that’s why endings are so foreign to our beings. Even death itself is an intrusion because we were initially created to live forever. The Curse has twisted everything and that’s why change and endings and standing on the precipice of the unknown every December 31st can have an unnerving effect on many of us. That ache of confusion, uncertainty, perhaps even fear, in your heart as you contemplate the new decade is the ache of Eternity. Your Maker didn’t create you to die; He created you to live. So may we greet 2020 with Life, our only goal to know Adonai, to truly know Him, and to make Him known because in the light of Eternity, that’s all that will really matter in the end.

May we all wake up in 2020 and find that, in our King, we are strong. We’ve been sleeping. I’ve been sleeping. And in our apathetic slumber, the Enemy has blinded us with a fog of ease. Life is no laughing matter, though there is much laughter to be had. May we rise to be everything our Maker has called us to be.