"Keep Your 'I Love You's' Up to Date"

1st Pet 4.7-8 NIV

“The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”

Peter wrote to first century Christians in Asia Minor [1] to prepare them for the suffering they were likely to endure by the hand of the brutal and demented Nero during a time of political upheaval in Rome. Christians became scapegoats for all that was wrong with the empire. “The end of all things” associated with the return of Christ did not occur during Peter’s lifetime. Nearly twenty centuries later, the second coming of Jesus has yet to happen. While “near” may sound close, certainly closer than two thousand years, God’s perspective on time is radically different than ours:

“But don't forget this, dear friends, that a day or a thousand years

from now is like tomorrow to the Lord. He isn't really being slow about his

promised return, even though it sometimes seems that way.”

2nd Peter 3.8-9 The Living Bible

Christ will return and “the end of all things is near,” as God measures ‘nearness.’

“The end of all things is near,” however, my personal end may be even more near. I may only have a few decades of life on earth left. Perhaps only a few minutes. My days on earth are numbered. Like the timing of Christ’s return [2], the “day or hour” of my own demise remains a mystery to me. I only know that I will die [3] and that, in the light of eternity, “the end of all things [for me] is [very] near.” All human beings can state most assuredly with Jeremiah and the people of Israel during their time of captivity in Babylon:

“Our end was near, our days were numbered, for our end had come.”

Lamentations 4.18b New International Version

Perhaps the most important aspect of my life is the relationships I am privileged to enjoy. They mean everything to me. I could not survive without my family, friends, business contacts, fellow believers, neighbors, and local church. I need people, and now that my wife is in heaven, I need my human community more than ever before. God designed it that way. I have made and received commitments from many of these people in the form of contracts for business, certificates of membership, and in the case of my dear, deceased wife, a license for marriage. Most of my relationships (even those few defined by written agreements) were, and continue to be, held together because of love, trust, and good will. I intend to do my part to keep it that way.

About thirty-six years ago Ken Blanchard wrote a popular book entitled The One-Minute Manager and coined the phrase “Keep your ‘I love you’s’ up to date.” I shall never forgot that. Life is too short not to keep your “I love you’s” up to date...

“
The end of all things is near. Therefore… love each other deeply...”

Every relationship will someday end. I will not be married in heaven. In a few years we’ll all be gone and our children will run the planet. In a few years after that, they’ll be dead and the world will be under the management of people not yet conceived! No one will remember you or me then.

In the meantime, all that really matters is to love the people together with whom I am called to share this very short space of time on earth.

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The black and white image of "I Love You" in sign language is from LatinaGirl9519 on PhotoBucket.

[1] Asia Minor includes the areas of modern day Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Turkey. These areas hosted many young churches started by Paul and other apostles and would become the likely target of Nero’s persecution expanding south and east from his headquarters in Rome during the latter half of the first century.

[2] Matthew 24.36; 25.13 and parallel passage in Mark 13.32.

[3] “…it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27 NKJV).