History is Having a Baby

In Matthew 24:1-44, Jesus takes a comment from his disciples about the glory of the Temple to explain to them the signs that will accompany the end of the world. Many crazy things will take place, but those are not the end. They are the birth pains leading up to the real end, which is the Day of the Lord and the Messiah's return. Part of this is corrective. They can't imagine the world continuing if the Temple is destroyed. But Jesus says that will just be a part of the process. Now some two-thousand years later, we're still waiting. Will it really happen? Should we "modern" people believe that the end is nigh or pay attention to such warnings? Taking Jesus' teaching seriously means acknowlding that history will indeed have a baby, which should encourage us to live intentionally, even if we should also live with patience and joy.