After My Skin Has Been Destroyed...

I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end

he will stand on the earth.

And after my skin has been destroyed,

yet in my flesh I will see God;

I myself will see him with my own eyes—

I and not another.

How my heart yearns within me!

--Job 19:25-27

These words from thousands of years ago, long before most of the rest of the scriptures, seem among the most profound ever spoken or written. They are a promise and a hope. But there is something more.

These words are a threat. They are a threat to every power and principality, every god or tyrant or king, every system or scheme or power-grab or plot in the human heart.

They are a threat to my own sinfulness and my own death, a threat to the fears and anxieties and doubts and dread that darken my chest and cloud my head.

Empires will fall and nations will scatter. The earth will be shaken. Mountains will turn to rubble, seas will roil and overflow their shores, fire will consume forests and wind will level horizons and turn skies to blood with scattered earth.

And when the dust settles, the Redeemer will stand, will bestride the narrow world like a Colossus. And I will look upon him with my own redeemed eyes. How my heart yearns within me!