(image found by looking up "angry Jesus")

This phrase is something that has haunted young men and women throughout conservative denominations for generations. I can remember hearing stories from my days at CBC (before movie theaters were allowed) that had people questioning every thought because if Jesus were to return, they wouldn't want to be doing what they were doing. We all know that nothing being done in a movie theater is worth doing when Jesus returns and the pulpit became a location by which you could prove it. While reading Crazy Love (listed below), I ran across this quote that Francis Chan's grandmother spoke while attending a play in a theater. He asked "Are you having a good time?" She responded :

"Oh honey, I really don't want to be here right now. I just don't know if this is where I want to be when Christ returns. I'd rather be helping someone or on my knees praying. I don't want Him to return and find me sitting in a theater." Grandma Clara

At first when I read this, I thought about the stories I heard above. I thought of the kind of life that overly dissects each action and response and wonders if Jesus came back at that very moment would he come back disappointed, angry or something all together different. Though I am not intending to jump in the overly religious cesspool that causes all of us to cringe at the thought of it, I wonder if Jesus were to return, would WE be disappointed? If He returned and gave us the "I told you I was coming", would we look up to Him, arise to meet Him and find that we were utterly wasting our days. I know it is easy to say all this and not do anything about it. It's really easy to write, go home and follow suit with what I have always done. I wonder if Grandma Clara is hitting on a nerve that none of us want to acknowledge. Maybe the thought of living radically and day by day as if it could be our last (because we aren't guaranteed it right?), would our lives look different. I have another quote to share with you. Maybe this is a thought to life by. Then again, maybe it's just a thought.

“Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” Tim Kizziar
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Now playing: Merchant Band - Wonderful Savior