All the Trumpets

When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. – Revelation 8:1-2 (NRSV) 

The funniest part of modern doomsday prophets, to me, is their redundancy. “The end is near!” they predict—as if no one else is thinking the same thing. As if the rest of us aren’t already worrying over the micro-destructions that stress our daily lives. As if news outlets aren’t already analyzing every possible ending, exit poll, and bubble pop. 

Maybe an angel will blow a trumpet when the end is near, sparking a downpour of fire from heaven that burns up the earth and desecrates the seas. Or maybe the downpour will be bombs dropped from warplanes. Maybe the oceans will rot beneath oil spills and plastic debris.  

Maybe an angel will blow a trumpet and the sun will dim, the moon will wane, the stars will fall, and our days will be as dark as our nights. Or maybe wildfire smoke will become a perennial shadow. Maybe societies will obscure the rhythms of rest for the sake of “saving” productivity. 

Maybe an angel will blow a trumpet and the earth will split open to reveal stinging locusts, sent to torture humanity. Or maybe we will continue to accept the perennial plague of cruelty so long as it hurts others worse than it hurts us. 

Maybe the question isn’t what the end times will look like, or who will accurately predict them, or how many trumpets will blow.  

Maybe the question is why we perpetually feed the hype of doom, when the fire of every sunrise and the shout of every tree and the quake of every rock together call us to feed the hope of God’s renewal.

Prayer
Strip away the sackcloth I wear too readily, O God. Drape my shoulders with a garland of joy, lift my voice with the song of hope that outlasts every ending.