Tuesday, November 28, 2006

A Coming Day...

You are in your car driving home. Thoughts wander to the game you want to see or meal you want to eat, when suddenly a sound unlike any you've ever heard fills the air. The sound is high above you.

A trumpet?
A choir?
A choir of trumpets?
You don't know, but you want to know.


So you pull over, get out of your car, and look up. As you do, you see you aren't the only curious one. The roadside has become a parking lot. Car doors are open, and people are staring at the sky. Shoppers are racing out of the grocery store. The Little League baseball game across the street has come to a halt. Players and parents are searching the clouds. And what they see, and what you see, has never before been seen.


As if the sky were a curtain, the drapes of the atmosphere part. A brilliant light spills onto the earth. There are no shadows. None. From whence came the light begins to tumble a river of color spiking crystals of every hue ever seen and a million more never seen. Riding on the flow is an endless fleet of angels. They pass through the curtains one myriad at a time, until they occupy every square inch of the sky.

North.
South.
East.
West.

Thousands of silvery wings rise and fall in unison, and over the sound of the trumpets, you can hear the cherubim and seraphim chanting, Holy, Holy, Holy. The final flank of angels is followed by twenty-four silver-bearded elders and a multitude of souls who join the angels in worship.

Presently the movement stops and the trumpets are silent, leaving only the triumphant triplet: Holy, Holy, Holy. Between each word is a pause. With each word, a profound reverence. You hear your voice join in the chorus. You don't know why you say the words, but you know you must.

Suddenly, the heavens are quiet. All is quiet. The angels turn, you turn, the entire world turns ...and...there He is...Jesus.

Through waves of light you see the silhouetted figure of Christ the King. He is atop a great stallion, and the stallion is atop a billowing cloud. He opens his mouth, and you are surrounded by his declaration : I am the Alpha and the Omega. The angels bow their heads. The elders remove their crowns. And before you is a Figure so consuming that you know, instantly you know: Nothing else matters.

Forget stock markets and school reports. Sales meetings and football games. Nothing is newsworthy..

All that mattered, matters no more....for Christ has come. . .



'When Christ Comes" by Max Lucado
Thanks Denise for sharing this with me...

3 comments:

Robert Fellows, Jr. said...

I have read that before and it gives me chills and chokes me up each time I read it. What a day that will be! Thanks, Jim!

Kevin Stoxe said...

Oh man !!!! Did I miss it ????? As most of us would have to say in our busy lives, "I wasn't paying attention."

Mark W. said...

That's really kind of a creepy scenario, don't you think? I think that scripturally it's defensible to maintain that such an encounter with God is best described as "terrifying."

Perhaps this sounds weird, but I'd almost rather get to grow old and die like everyone else. And I like to think that Christ's return is still millennia away...that in the world Christ returns to, comtemporary America will be little more than an archeological myth.

This world is barely begun.