Dissolved

2 Peter 3:11-18 II Advent Thursday (year 2)

“Since all these things are to be dissolved.”

The theologian Hans Kung writes of God’s “Absolute Future”-- the future beyond time that is in God’s hands only. We can't be certain what that future will be like. The certainty we do have is that, as Paul writes, “the world in its present form is passing away (I Cor 7:30-32).” The universe as we know it is finite.

Finitude is something we can’t think about too long. We can’t comprehend it. To function we require a certain amount of denial. Even some of our churches consider it bad form to bring up the fact that this life itself is the “City of Destruction” John Bunyan wrote about in "Pilgrim's Progress."

But Advent is the right time to contemplate our finitude, and to drink deeply from the promises of Parousia. If the form of your life is passing away, if you are sick, if you have lost someone, if you are hurting, if the world is going to hell in a go-cart: these are not signs of God’s abandonment. No, these ills and pains are signs reminders that he is coming back for us.