Taking It Personally

Landon: I'm totally with you on this. If nothing else, to preach this subject must mean to preach with the recognition that something is actually at stake. To steal your phrase from the other night at IHOP, eschatological preaching must be a "lived onomatopoeia."

Rocky: Driving home tonight something occurred to me about our project here, about the task of preaching itself, and about the nature of God. I will be brief.

Preaching eschatology must be an engagement with the future itself, a personal rendezvous with the end of time on a personal and cosmic level, and not merely a peddling with ideas about the future and the end of time. C.S. Lewis' image of children playing with chemistry sets and Annie Dillard's quip about the need for church ushers to issue signal flares instead of programs come to mind.

My challenge is going to be engaging personally and seriously with this eschatology stuff, and not simply learning and talking about it. But, like I said, that's the challenge of faith itself, no?