Jesus uses the fig tree to show how his return is as inevitable as the turning of the seasons. If he says something is going to happen, it will, in time, happen.

OUR SUN IS a star, one of 200 billion such entities in the Milky Way, to say nothing of the universe. As we learn this bald fact in science class, it by no means extinguishes our singular allegiance to the one star that gives us heat and light, holds us in place and possibility. To us the sun is not just a star. It’s a power so fundamental to life on this planet that we feel great sympathy for our ancient ancestors who once worshipped it as a god.

And then they’ll see the Son of Man enter in grand style, his Arrival filling the sky—no one will miss it! He’ll dispatch the angels; they will pull in the chosen from the four winds, from pole to pole.

The point of the biblical stories that lead us into Advent is to bolster our faith when we face threats to our faith. The end-time texts were thought to have been written much earlier by holy persons who had looked into the future—into our time—and seen not only our danger and oppression, but also that we would triumph in the end.

Let us pray that in the present hour and in the end-times to come God may find us faithful.

The Letter to the Hebrews goes out of its way to make the point that Jesus is the one High Priest who has made one offering that is truly effective in forgiving sin.

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. —T. S. Eliot