Deadlines and 'The day of the Lord'

We think of time as a line, and on that line we tie many knots we call deadlines.

Dead-lines. Interesting word.

Just how dead is a deadline?

Many of them are pretty dead even before you get to them. That’s because many of them are artificial. In an achievement-oriented culture such as ours, many of our deadlines are culturally imposed:

In keeping up with the Joneses, you’ve got to look like the Joneses. And that entails meeting deadlines:

Let’s get that HDTV, say, by Christmas. That way we’ll look like the Joneses, who already have one (the nerve …!). So now I’ve got to come up with, oh, about a thousand bucks in a coupla weeks.

Once that deadline is fixed, it’s hard to shake. In fact we don’t want to shake it. Our happiness somehow depends on meeting the deadline.

Deadlines are subtle in that way.

Earlier in my academic “trajectory” (think of it as an ascending line), I set the goal of publishing more papers than my peers. That involved deadlines. Dead-lines. I didn’t kill myself meeting them, but I sure know about blood-pressure meds.

In the Scriptures, there is the phrase “the day of the Lord” -- and it is one frustrating phrase. This is because “the day of the Lord” is a moving target. You can’t exactly point to a knot on your time-line and say, “See, that knot is ‘the day of the Lord.’ So watch out, you’ve got about a week and a half left before it hits…”.

You just can’t say that because this “day of the Lord” is here, all around us, as much as it is to come. You can't set up your priorities on a line: this first, this second, this third, to prepare for the day of the Lord … .

It's a hard thing to tie knots when there are no lines.

It's a hard thing to build a stepladder out of water ... when you are in the ocean.

Logos2Go

Joel 2.28-31 And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit. And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls.

Acts 2.16-17, 20 But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh … (20) the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day …

Hebrews 1.1-2 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things …

The picture of building a step ladder out of water when you are in the ocean is not mine. I believe it is in one of Cornelius van Til's books.