Keep Calm, Carry On (Mark 13)

“How does following Jesus inform the way we worry about the world?” In Mark 13, Jesus says to his disciples that the temple will be destroyed, which would have meant the end of the world for the disciples and the rest of the Jewish people as they knew it. Four of them took Jesus aside and pressed him, “Tell us, when will all this happen? What signs can we look for?” They wanted to know when and how this would happen. But instead of answering “When is the world going to end?” he answered, “How are we going to live in a world that is going to end?” Because of what we believe about Jesus, we truly can be uniquely non-anxious about our messed up world. That belief can equip is to move in and through the crises of this world with a little less panic and carry on with the often tedious, under-appreciated, and unglamorous work of following Jesus and living for the sake of neighbor.