Category Archives: Zechariah

14 Watch, for the day of the Lord is coming when your possessions will be plundered right in front of you! ² I will gather all the nations to fight against Jerusalem. The city will be taken, the houses looted, and the women raped. Half the population will be taken into captivity, and the rest will be left among the ruins of the city.

³ Then the Lord will go out to fight against those nations, as he has fought in times past. ⁴ On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem. And the Mount of Olives will split apart, making a wide valley running from east to west. Half the mountain will move toward the north and half toward the south. ⁵ You will flee through this valley, for it will reach across to Azal. Yes, you will flee as you did from the earthquake in the days of King Uzziah of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come, and all his holy ones with him.

⁶ On that day the sources of light will no longer shine, ⁷ yet there will be continuous day! Only the Lord knows how this could happen. There will be no normal day and night, for at evening time it will still be light.

⁸ On that day life-giving waters will flow out from Jerusalem, half toward the Dead Sea and half toward the Mediterranean, flowing continuously in both summer and winter.

⁹ And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day there will be one Lord—his name alone will be worshiped.

Zechariah 14:1-9

Dear God, I’m going to confess that I don’t have the full context of this passage, and I probably shouldn’t even being praying on it out of context. I got here because verse 9 was the verse of the day from Bible Gateway, and it made me think about my thoughts on the end and what things will look like on that day.

Frankly, I think my thoughts are simultaneously about as both heretical and truthful as anyone else’s because we just don’t know. I say that because I don’t think any of us really know.

The video I watched on Christopher Hitchens about his antagonism towards you and your people has stuck with me the last couple of days. Not because anything within me was shaken. No, it was more because I felt sorry for him. And, again, not because I think he’ll end up in “hell,” but because he seemed so unhappy and to be wallowing around in his unhappiness and enticing others to join in his unhappiness. Frankly, if I’m right and at the moment of our death we enter into your new earth through your timelessness, I hope Jesus looked at him and had mercy on him, just as he did Paul on the road to Damascus.

My wife was talking with someone who had a near-death experience recently and they told her about seeing a white dome and all was well. I know some neuroscientists have explained the stories as something biological that happens. And the fact that the man heard a voice say it wasn’t yet time for him to die is not what really happened. But I simply don’t think that can be discounted. Physical explanation? Maybe. Does that mean it’s not real? No.

We have been living and dying on earth for a long, long time. Billions and billions, and billions of people have lived and died. So far, I am on part of that list, and one day my journey will be completed. And it doesn’t matter what I think about what will happen. It doesn’t matter if I am right or if I am wrong. But I think my mission should be to work the opposite of Mr. Hitchens. As I perceive him working so hard to drag people into his misery, I should be about offering your joy and peace, relationship with you and reconciliation with you, as possible. Help me to be better about that, including in my conversations with friends today.

I offer all of this to you in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen

On that day life-giving waters will flow out from Jerusalem, half toward the Dead Sea and half toward the Mediterranean, flowing continuously in both summer and winter. And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day there will be one Lord —his name alone will be worshiped.
Zechariah 14:8-9

Dear God, I was having lunch with a friend today and Israel came up. He’s had some recent experience there and he mentioned that “most” Israelis are not devout and do not take their Jewish faith seriously. I don’t know how true that is, but I’d have to say it seems to be consistent with my perception. To be sure, I know some Jewish people who take their love for you and faith in you very seriously. But from a distance and what they portray publicly, I don’t see much mention of you from their society as a whole.

Which leads me to our country. It feels like we (and I mean the collective, broad-stroke stereotype of “we”) are becoming more and more believers that there is a God and not followers of you. This same friend mentioned his three adult children are very different in their faith. one is practically a monk (if not an actual monk—I’m not clear on his title, but he’s something in the Catholic Church). Another child is sounded to me like a believer in you and not a follower of you. The third is totally agnostic, if not atheist, pursuing morality as a principle by which to live his life. This isn’t dissimilar from my own children or many children of friends whom I know—or many people my age. We are drifting. We are the frog in the pot, cluelessly approaching the boiling point.

Father, Zechariah tells us in this prophecy that there will be a day when your name alone will be worshipped. I also heard an interview on a podcast yesterday where they talked about whether or not they should be worried about the future of the Christian church. Their ultimate answer was no, in the long run your church will be fine because you are in charge. But it might have to go through a refining process over a long period of time. It might get smaller, but ultimately more influential. One day the churches and the Christian faith we planted in the Southern Hemisphere might have to save faith in the northern hemisphere, but your church will be fine. Well, please, show me what you would have me do in the lives around me in your world so that I might be a small part of any ultimate plan you have.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen