>>Interestingly enough, last night I was at a dinner, and the dinner conversation was around the end times and the end of the world and the folks I was having dinner with, they’re asking my thoughts. And bottom line, I told them this.  I don’t give it a lot of thought. When will it come? I don’t know. But what I do give a lot of thought to is that I trust in God and however God brings the end times together. I simply trust in that.  I know that I have to focus on the here in the now because that is the work of the disciple of the Lord. I went on to tell them a story that happened during COVID. I went to Northwestern Hospital.  I was invited by one of our board members, whose mother in law was well in her 80’s. She was on life support. She was dying and I went into the hospital and it was in ICU and the mother’s daughter was there and me.  Praying and giving her the last rites, a difficult moment, but a beautiful moment as well. The one thing I noticed about Carmela, who was being called on to God at that very moment when she was wrapped in a beautiful blanket and the blanket was a photograph.  It was a photograph of her at a wedding, with all of her family surrounded by her. It was taken about five years previous. There was Carmela in her eighties, surrounded by over 40 family members – her children, her grandchildren, her great grandchildren.  And they took that picture and they made a beautiful blanket for her. She was covered by her family. She was enwrapped in love, the love of her family. What a powerful image that was and what a consoling image as well.  No matter how the end times come for any of us, know that we are enveloped. We are wrapped in the love of God, a god who says that God will be with us. He will be with us until the very end of time and then time eternal in the presence of the Lord.  What consolation.  I will always remember that beautiful blanket in the privilege of anointing Carmela wrapped in her family’s love wrapped in God’s love, as each of us are.