Trust in God but tie your camel, the Arab proverb shrewdly recommends. We are in the world but not of the world and need to combine the qualities of serpents and doves in our dealings in the marketplace.

Perhaps Paul was directing his stern words in Thessalonians to those who, believing the end to be near, stopped working altogether. And Jesus has several responses to those who are looking for the last days. Be wary of false messiahs, and don't be terrified of or deceived by upheavals, because they are bound to happen.

MANY OF OUR fellow citizens sold or lost homes in recent times. I unloaded mine this year, so I know the heartache and hardship of seeing your whole life packed into boxes or tossed into the trash outright. Of course it’s not “life” that’s contained in our material possessions or even our idea of home.

Jesus' words "by your perseverance you will secure your lives" call to mind the experiences of birds as they make a seasonal migration. Multiple times a year various species of birds travel thousands of miles in response to changes in food availability, habitat, or climate.

One summer, years ago, I was an activities counselor in charge of 16 young boys, ages 5 to 10. I would often load them into a big van and off we'd go on fun adventures. Joey, a high-school kid from the same childcare institution, was assigned to help me, and thank God for that, because while I drove he had the unenviable task of keeping the boys in line.

In this age of billion-dollar corporate bankruptcies and catastrophic foreclosures, the apocalypse, as a time of cataclysmic events, appears to be now. Yet as a time of divine revelation and the victory of good over evil, the apocalypse seems destined to remain in the future.

In the first reading, the prophet Malachi reveals that the same fire can destroy or heal, depending on how we've lived our lives. A good analogy in modern life might be how we react to stress. All of life involves some stress.

In the presence of God, let us pray for God's gracious forgiveness.

The days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down. In the minds of Jesus' contemporaries, the Jerusalem temple stood for all that was strong about God's promises

Perseverance is the sister of patience, the daughter of constancy, the friend of peace, the cementer of friendships, the bond of harmony, and the bulwark of holiness. --Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)