I no longer wait for Jesus to come back. And that is different than how I lived the first 30 years of my life, wondering if we were measurably closer, listening to the certainty that so many people had. And I wonder why it is so much sexier to try to guess if this war is part of the plan, if that earthquake was a sign than to look at my neighbor and say, "what needs do you have that I could meet?"

I no longer worry and fret that someone I love is going to hell. Who was it who said that, "hell is empty and all the devils are here?" Probably Shakespeare. I don't mean to be flippant. Instead, I mean to be so incredibly serious about the weight of the world's suffering and how far back into history much of it stretches and also, also, also the way we are taught not to dig too deeply or look too long at how the pattern repeats, is disrupted and then repeats. 

These are tied together. The present and eternity. And while Kant once convinced me of an afterlife by pointing out the way the present lacks justice, the way so many Christians won't lift a finger in pursuit of justice convinces me that there is something deeply wrong with putting all of your hope in the next life. A cosmic escapism that does not keep step with the call to love your neighbor and for God's will to be done on Earth as though it were heaven.