Before the title history.
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At the start of the year, we enter 97 with anticipation and fear. The essence of life is to live in relationships. One of them is the relationship with climate, such as land, wind, and mountains, which are certain spaces. Another important relationship is time. Time is physically more than the quantitative concept of a minute, an hour, a day, or a month.
The Eastern concept of time, in contrast to the Western concept of time, which emphasizes the one-sided flow extending from '0' to infinity, seems to have a personality. For example, people focus on when a person is born, and there are cases where people look at the four weeks or the secrets of soil maintenance. This seems to be based on the premise that a person lives with the rhythm of the time he was born in his life. It is meaningful because there is hidden wisdom that everything has its own time and that it should be timely, but this leads to a superstitious custom of fortune-telling, so an attitude of life that is controlled by time and fate is by no means a desirable path. I can't.
The important thing is to connect from the question of "what is the time now" to the question of "what is the right choice and responsibility to do at a time like this", a sense of history, and a sense of responsibility.
When we realize that we cannot enter into another passage until we have completely passed through one passage of time, we develop the power of waiting and perseverance. In particular, the Christian faith calls for a history-conscious faith that reads the will of God contained within time.
The text of the Bible we read today is a warning against a life in which we do not properly distinguish the signs of the times and neglect our decisions and responsibilities. Jesus points out that in their daily life, they have the wisdom to accurately discern and predict the diary. In other words, he tells the parable about why he can't judge the signs of the times when he knows that it will rain soon when there is a high humidity cloud in the Mediterranean Sea, and it will become dry and hot when the west wind blows in the Arabian desert.
The core message of the Gospels is 'the kingdom of God'. However, in order to properly understand this proclamation of the kingdom of God, an eschatological understanding is a prerequisite. The coming kingdom of God has an urgent transitional meaning to break the old world and inform the new world. In this new age, when the kingdom of God is eschatologically imminent, it is a call to decide how you should live your life and how you should act.
From this point of view, we should meditate deeply on how and with what attitude to live on the stage of the open history of 1997.
First, it is the attitude of preparing for life. Apocalyptic beliefs play a dual role. It plays a role in raising tension and alertness in a life that has so far been relaxed and meaningless, and at the same time, it plays a role in unraveling and arranging the relationship that is entangled in the face of ultimate reality with forgiveness and love. Apocalyptic beliefs tend to highlight the religious aspect of fear or oppression, but it must be understood that there is an aspect of releasing and reconciling and softening the truth. In the face of ultimate death, humans show the beauty of pursuing the best relationship.
The biblical parable of the kingdom of God always prompts us to prepare and prepare our lives for a new age, a new environment, and a new situation. The parable of the ten virgins and the parable of the two women grinding the mill, etc. exemplify an attitude of life that responds sensitively to new situations and an attitude of new adaptation.
Second, it is an attitude toward life with a sense of history. An age demands a ritual that is appropriate for that age. Likewise, today's history demands the consciousness to live responsibly in this era. This sense of history is based on historical experience. History consciousness is the systematic arrangement of the realization of a certain meaning and understanding from historical experience and recognition.
This age, for example, is seriously calling on us to be thrifty and simple forms of life. If development and advancement have valued making more, consuming more, and throwing away more, it is time to shift to a new consciousness that consumes less and leaves less. This awareness of the environment is also an understanding we have gained from historical experience. It is very important to use the historical experience gained through this awakened subjective consciousness in our lives, to make a decision, and to take responsibility.
But we are not opportunists. We who live before God (Coram Deo) are given the ability to save time. As an open year, 1997 can be a year of grace for us when we read God's dispensation through this age and make the most correct and best decisions and choices. In other words, it could be a year in which God, the first and last, walks with us.