My family and I recently returned from a 7-day Caribbean
cruise. One of the stops we made was in
Cozumel, Mexico. It just happened that
we arrived on December 21 – the final date on the ancient Mayan calendar and,
therefore, what some people believed would be the end of the world. I really hadn’t thought about the fact that
we would be in Mexico on this specific date when I booked this cruise a couple
of years ago. It wasn’t until I was
reading the daily "Cruise Compass" placed in our stateroom the night before that I
realized how perfect our timing was!
I thought the letter that accompanied the rundown of the next day's events was quite interesting. It
informed passengers who would be visiting Cozumel the next day that the Mexican
authorities had issued certain restrictions including not allowing backpacks
onto archeological sites, prohibiting videotaping, and cautioning “Visitors
cannot shout or try to promote religious or political messages to the crowd.”
As we were discussing this over breakfast the next morning,
my daughter mentioned a program she had seen on television based on “Doomsday
Preppers,” people who live otherwise ordinary lives but spend time preparing
for the end of the world as we know it.
These individuals build underground bunkers, educate themselves on long-term
food storage, and are very serious about defense training. My personal feeling is that, should something
catastrophic happen to destroy life on earth, I’d rather be in the midst of the
carnage and completely destroyed than be part of the armed survivors whose top
priority was self-preservation.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate life. I’m all about living it to its fullest. Sign me up for the Florida Hospital Healthy
100! I like living out loud! However, as we’re all far too aware, whether
you’re age 3, 30, or 103, life is uncertain.
It doesn’t have to be a Mayan-predicted catastrophe. It could be illness, accident, or
tragedy. Tomorrow is never a guarantee.
As a Christian, I believe that God has provided for me in
this world, and I will live each day thankful for what I have been given. However, I also know there’s something better
on the horizon. I can choose to take
this information and live a life of self-preservation – completely focused on
myself, concerned only about some self-delusional checklist of preparation
tasks, and maybe shouting “religious messages” to the crowd.
Or I can embrace today and those who are on the journey with
me and, in doing so, give a glimpse of what’s waiting for us after the end of
this world. In his book, Messy Church,
Ross Parsley writes, “The implication here is that we experience God through
the love of other people. God is made
real and present among us when we become experts in loving one another.”
Those who interpreted the end of the Mayan calendar as the
end of our world were as wrong as others who have made similar
predictions. As I look forward to 2013,
I look forward to a great year here on earth and also being that much closer to
the day Jesus returns. It makes me think
of the R.E.M. song from the Eighties: “It’s the end of the world as we know it,
and I feel fine.”
Tami Cinquemani
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