But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.
2 Peter 3:10 (NIV)
Everything Comes Into the Open
Nothing had happened yet, and scoffers had started asking where the coming had got to. Years had gone by on the promise and the sun still came up the same way. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. A thief sends no word ahead, and the comparison stops right there.
The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. Everything done here comes out from under whatever has been lying across it, the way a field comes back when the snow goes off.
Everything done in it covers a great deal of ground, the parts somebody wrote down and the parts that got hidden on purpose. Then we’re asked what kind of people we ought to be, and told to live holy and godly lives. It still cheers me up to read that, and the cheer is a small one, about the size of finding money in a coat pocket in the fall.
The blacktop behind the school has been empty since June, and Wes is out on it on a Saturday morning with two gallons of yellow and a chalk line, laying out a four-square court from what he can remember of one. He makes furniture, and he can cut a dovetail so tight it takes a light behind it to find the seam, and he has never put paint on asphalt in his life. Wes tapes it the way he’d tape a wall, the tape lifts in the heat, and the yellow runs under it in three places down the first side.
He can see it’s wrong before he’s halfway through the second side. He goes at the bad line with a rag and mineral spirits and spreads it wider. He stands out there working it out and decides to leave it, because the light’s going and the second coat is tomorrow and nobody in September is going to measure a four-square court by eye. Then he changes his mind and goes back to the truck for the scraper.
A Prayer to Remember
Thank you, Father, that everything done here comes into the open, the part with a name on it and the part nobody saw. Thank you that the day comes on your word and not on anybody’s calendar. Send me back to the work I left half done, and let me be glad on the morning it’s all uncovered.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
