"Use your sickle and reap the harvest,
for the time to reap has come,
because the earth's harvest is fully ripe."
There is time while the harvest grows. The weeds and the wheat grow alongside one another. There is a period of mercy where each thing becomes more and more fully what it is on a fundamental level. Good fruit abounds or bad fruit dominates. This time of mercy will not last forever. The time of the harvest will come.
And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?"
He answered,
"See that you not be deceived,
for many will come in my name, saying,
'I am he,' and 'The time has come.'
Do not follow them!
The point of knowing that there is an end is not so we can waste a lot of time speculating about it, or worse, fearing it. It is rather so that we can be ready when it comes. The world seems to continue moving forward more or less as it always has. And that can lull us into complasence. Or disasters can shake us up so much that we lose our orientation. But if we are truly prepared for the harvest neither danger will affect us.
The Lord comes to judge the earth
We want to be ready to greet the king when he comes. We should avoid letting what is only temporal take up our whole perspective. Thinking that this life is all there is, or that the way it is unfolding is the old possible way it can unfold, these are real dangers we face. Both miss the point of why there is a time of mercy at all. It is precisely so that what sort of fruit we are can become evident. Both dangers fail to realize the goal-directed nature of the universe which itself longs to bear its fruit for the king.
Then shall all the trees of the forest exult.
Before the LORD, for he comes;
for he comes to rule the earth.
He shall rule the world with justice
and the peoples with his constancy.
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