You stand at a threshold moment, living through your own apocalypse. And not the disaster-movie version of world destruction, but the true meaning of apocalypse as an unveiling, a revelation of what truly matters. When James Baldwin wrote The Fire Next Time in 1963, he posed a question that echoes through our contemporary crises: amid calls for vengeance and violence, amid a world soaked in blood and injustice, what will happen to all that beauty?
You see this same tension when Jesus’s disciples pointed to Jerusalem’s magnificent temple, gleaming white in the sun under Roman occupation. They saw beauty worth celebrating, even as Jesus unveiled a difficult truth about how violence and vengeance threaten to sweep away everything sacred. Your world mirrors theirs in troubling ways. You look around and see genocides and climate crises, gun violence and failed governments, hunger and poverty threatening to tear everything apart at the seams.
Like Baldwin witnessing the rich wonder of Harlem while hearing calls to burn everything down, you find yourself asking what could be saved, what beauty deserves protection, what fragments of hope might be gathered and preserved. The word apocalypse itself simply means unveiling or revelation—a moment when something hidden becomes visible. You’re living through such a revelation now, witnessing how fragile beauty can be, how much stands at stake, how urgent the work of preservation has become.
“What will happen to all this beauty if the world really does go up in flame? It can be easy to fantasize about destruction, but what will happen to all that beauty?”
This is precisely why you gather in community, why you show up to do the work of justice and care. You’re not here to save the entire world, one that is bigger than any of us, but to save what parts you can protect, to guard the beautiful things and beautiful people that might otherwise pass away. Through your immigration task force, you offer shelter to people being hunted and deported. Through your open and affirming stance, you create belonging for LGBTQIA+ people being pushed out of families and churches.
Through your justice work, you stand against gun violence, environmental destruction, and the marginalization of people with mental health challenges.
Where others preach vengeance and division, you gather to say no, to choose preservation over destruction, to answer Baldwin’s question with your actions.
The old hymn promises fire next time as divine punishment, but Genesis actually says God will never again destroy the world in such catastrophic ways, and you take that as your calling to ensure the future lies not in destruction but in the beauty you choose to protect and nurture through these apocalyptic times.
