384 The Keys at The Corner

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “The Keys at The Corner”, originally shared on November 22, 2025. It was the 384^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   The Boy Scout and Girl Scout motto is “Be Prepared.” That’s Jesus’ counsel for Christians, but for what, and how? Today, we’re going to find out.

   My wife, Rev. Sally Welch, and I go walking together almost every day.

   There is one place that we walk where the sidewalk turns at a corner. One day, several months ago, we found some keys there, lying on the concrete.

   We left them there, thinking that whoever lost them would miss them and retrace their steps to find them. But the next time we walked in that place, the keys were still there. And the next time, and the next.

   The time after that, someone had put most of the keys on top of the fence at the corner so that they would be less likely to be kicked into the leaves and more likely to be seen and found by their owner.

   The keys on the corner are still there, months later. Lost.

   Why? Who would not miss lost keys and go looking for them?

   Do they no longer have any purpose? Did someone forget what they were for?

   The answer might have everything to do with the reading from the Gospels that is being shared in the vast majority of churches today, Luke 21:5-19.

   We are now almost at the end of our current Church Year. In two weeks, we will start a new Church year with season of Advent, preparing us for Christmas.

   As the old year ends, however, our readings from the Gospels will carry themes about the end of history, to help prepare us for the coming of the perfection of the reign of God in a new heaven and a new earth when Jesus comes again to judge the living and the dead.

   These last Gospel readings at the end of the old year give us the keys to being prepared when the Judgement comes. Will we use them, or will we lose them?

   Some people, though, are more afraid of the breakdown of society as we know it. “Preppers” are concerned about the possibility of another world war? What if our economy collapses, and the world’s economies collapse with it? What if our political, social, racial, and even religious differences result in chaotic, unlivable cities and multiple civil wars throughout the world.

   These things may happen.

   But we know of one actual apocalypse that absolutely will happen We repeat our belief in it every Sunday in our creeds when we say, “he (Jesus) will come to judge the living and the dead.”

   Preppers are getting ready for the end of the world as they know it.

   Christians are prepping for another beginning as God knows it.

   How do we get ready for that?

   I remember when our son came home with a flier alerting parents to the “active shooter drill” that the school would be holding in the near future.

   We thought about how awful the world was where such things like that were necessary for children. Then we remembered that when we were about his age, our schools held nuclear war drills. We were taught not to look at the windows so that the blasts wouldn’t blind us. We were taught to go to the hallways so that we wouldn’t be shredded by flying glass. We were gathered in the basements where the survival food was kept so that, though I don’t remember that it was ever spelled out, we would have food to eat and water to drink when our parents weren’t able to come and get us.

   Some people built “fall-out” shelters in their back yards to protect themselves and their families. The Civil Defense agency of the government provided easy to follow plans.

   Science fiction was full of reflections on these shelters. What if your neighbors, or friends, or other relatives came pounding on your shelter door? Would you let them in? What if they were desperate? Would you kill to protect your can of corn? And what would await you when you had to come out?

   We were preparing for the end of the world in the hope that some of us might survive. But survive for what?

   The Bible has a lot to say about the end of the world, and it is our focus now at the end of the Church Year.

   It tells us that the end of the world is followed by a new beginning.

   The new Church year begins with the season of Advent in two weeks.

   Advent means “coming”, We live between two advents: the coming of Jesus as a baby in Bethlehem, and the coming of Jesus as Lord and Savior in the Final Judgement, with salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

   When will this happen? Do human beings have the keys to knowing the mind of God?

   Nobody knows. People have been saying that they have the key to understanding the signs of the end for two thousand years and, so far, every one of them has been wrong. Christian movements have arisen, built around the claim to have discovered the keys to the signs of the end, and so far, every one of them has been wrong.

   All we can know is that the end of history will be preceded by signs.

   But those signs are not there for us to have a time-code to crack. Those signs are the keys to show us the meaning of the end, and the role that Christians play in the revelation of it to the world.

   They are there to show us that life has meaning and purpose even in the worst of times, and that God is ultimately in control of how everything ends and what happens after.

   This happens in Luke 21:5-11,

⁵When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, ⁶“As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” ⁷They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” ⁸And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them. ⁹“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” ¹⁰Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; ¹¹there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.

   Does any of that sound familiar? Doesn’t it sound like our world right now?

   Do we care? Are we looking for those signs, the keys to knowing that the end of the redemption of the world is coming?

   And if we are, are we looking in the right places?

   I think that the truth lies in a story I told a few weeks ago, and it comes from bubblegum.

   Bazooka Bubblegum was sold by the piece when I was growing up. Inside the outer wrap, each piece was enclosed in waxy white paper with a colorful graphic comic printed on it.

   One of the first jokes I ever read was wrapped around that pink gum.

   The comic showed a police car pulling up to a cartoonishly drunk man. He was standing near the curb, hanging onto a streetlight.

   “What’s the trouble, buddy?” asked the policeman.

   “I’m looking for my house keys,” said the drunken man.

   “Where did you lose them?” asked the policeman, getting out of his car to help him look.

   “Down the street,” answered the man, waving his arm.

   “Well,” said the policeman, “if you lost them down the street, why are you looking for them here?”

   The man answered, “Because the light’s so much better here.”.

   That joke could be read as a parable, and its lesson would be pretty close to the meaning of today’s Gospel reading from Luke.

   Many of us have lived through violent and chaotic times, or we have heard about them from our older relatives. Everybody wants to be prepared for whatever is coming but, like the cartoonish drunk in the comic, we are often looking in the wrong places for the key to doing so.

   The key to the future is in God’s hand. It’s in the pierced hands of the risen Jesus Christ who invites us to find our way home by following Him.

   And where is Jesus taking us? I think that he is taking us to the place where we lost the key.

   Jesus says, in John 14:6,

⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

   Jesus is the key to being prepared, to living as Christians in our own time. We live in Him, and we tell other people the good news of peace and reconciliation with God through Him.

   We go on about out daily work as we are called, equipped, and sent by God to do. That daily work is living the Christian life, bearing witness to the hope that is within us, serving those in need, and testifying to the world that God has come in human flesh in Jesus Christ to suffer and to die on the cross in order to reconcile humanity to himself. God calls all people to repent, to turn away from the rebellion that is killing them, and toward a loving and gracious God and receive life. That makes us prepared to come before him in His Judgment.

   The best way for us to prepare for the end is by opening our hearts to the Holy Spirit, God’s ongoing personal presence for good in the world, to make us God’s people, to be born again, to be made God’s new Creation, to make our Christian faith everything about who we are, so that we may endure to the end, and the beginning.

   We are prepared when our lives have been shaped by God. Their quality is all that matters.

   Have you ever wondered why fine dinner ware is called “china” in English? It’s because fine dinnerware came to the West from the country of “China”. I thought of this recently when I saw some for sale at a 99 Ranch Market store near me. Porcelain was invented in China and for centuries finely made and artfully decorated plates and cups were traded with the West. It became known by its quality, and its quality was know by it’s country of origin. China.

   Likewise, Christians are known by the quality of their lives, and that quality is made known by its place of origin, in the work of God for us on the cross! In Jesus.

   Jesus says this, in his first century context, in his description of the end of the world in Luke 21:12-19

 ¹²“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. ¹³This will give you an opportunity to testify. ¹⁴So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; ¹⁵for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. ¹⁶You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. ¹⁷You will be hated by all because of my name. ¹⁸But not a hair of your head will perish. ¹⁹By your endurance you will gain your souls.

   We the people of God are a people set apart. How do we get ready for the end of life as we know it and the coming perfection of the Reign of God? There’s a clue for us in the weather.

   We got some much-needed rain this week. It was streaming down the street, off the roof, and through the downspouts. It brought us some relief from our long dry season, but it also brought mud and debris flows that changed the landscape in the burn areas. In some places events were cancelled and schools were closed.

   Some people were prepared and others were not.

   We Southern Californians are pretty relaxed when it comes to earthquakes. But if ½” of rain is predicted, we are all on “Storm Watch!”

   Water that was moving was once called “living water”. “Streams of living water” is used as a metaphor for the Holy Spirit in both the Old Testament and New Testament sections of the Bible.

   Are we preparing for the end of time when Jesus will return and raise the dead and all will be judged? Are we preparing ourselves and others for the end by receiving the transformational power of the Holy Spirit?

   Or have we lost they keys to unlocking the signs of the end? And if we have, why aren’t we looking for them where we lost them?

   Do we think that they no longer have any purpose for us? Did we forget what they were for? Have we forgotten what Jesus so plainly tells us in today’s reading from Luke 21?

   It is we who were (or are) lost today, and we lost ourselves. Christ came to find us. He picked us up and saved us on the cross.

   Today, we are standing on the corner at a crossroads. The keys we need are right in front of us in today’s reading.

   Some people who fear civilization’s collapse are stockpiling food, tools, and weapons, and learning to live without the power and water grid. Their concerns are temporary.

   We are preparing for the end of everything and the beginning of a new heaven and of a new earth.

   Jesus says that the meaning of the end lies in the quality of our faith, and in our coming opportunities to testify to it. How do we get ready? By allowing the Holy Spirit to shape us from within, restoring the quality of our faith, like fine china, so that we are made ready.

   Jesus says, “make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.”

   Let the Holy Spirit flow within you to make you who God has made you to be.

   Christ will come to Judge the living and the dead.

   Today, He is showing us how to be prepared.