Ready?

"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come." Matthew 24:42

I've a good pastor friend and district leader in our denomination who's been making some wonderful Facebook posts during the course of this Covid-19 crisis. I don't know what the true outcome of all this will be as far as how many lives this virus will take, but one thing I do know is that all of us are being confronted with our own mortality. Someone said that we all know we're going to die one day, but we live like that one day will never come. As people face the real possibility of that day coming upon them, what is their response? What is yours?

In the above Scripture from Matthew, Jesus was talking about His very real return to this world. He spoke these words during His earthly ministry, and not very long before He returned to His Father. At different times, and usually in times such a these, the church has emphasized His return, and our need to be ready for it. His teaching about the 10 virgins awaiting the coming of the bridegroom may be the most well known. All had lamps, and oil to burn in those lamps. The oil was symbolic of the Holy Spirit, and the virgins symbolic of the church, and the bridegroom of Christ. When He came, and He will come, 5 of the virgins had their lamps lit and full, 5 did not. They'd allowed their oil to run out. Those 5 missed Him. They were left out. Other things, concerns, desires, had come in, and their attentiveness to keeping their lamps trimmed had faded, even been forgotten. Looking for Him, living for Him, was no longer central to their lives. They'd left their first love. Because of it, they were left behind. They weren't ready. How like those 5 might we be? Where has the oil of His Holy Spirit dried up in our lives? Where have we stopped looking for Him, at Him, because our eyes have been filled with a love for other things, other "gods?"

There's one other element here to discuss; a sobering one. I had a Bible teacher named T.C. Mitchell who said of the return of Christ that we could not be sure of the time and day of Christ's visible return to this world, but we could be sure of this; we would each die one day, and when we did, His "return" for us would be sure. Would we be ready?

I'll finish with something I saw in a recent documentary. After the end of World War II, countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland had large numbers of ethnic Germans living there. The people of these countries, so enraged at the crimes of the Nazi's, executed more than 100,000 of these Germans in reprisal. Most were shot. I saw a horrible yet poignant photo of one such execution. On the side of a road, in the midst of hundreds of already fallen bodies, knelt an old man, hands clasped in prayer, waiting for the bullets that would kill him. There is no doubt in my mind that when those bullets hit, he immediately left the shell of his body, as His soul went directly into the presence of Christ. He was ready. But what of all those lying around him? Surely, with the end of the war, they must have believed that all the horrors were over. Few if any could have expected this. Yet death came, suddenly, unexpectedly, completely. How many were ready? How many of those lying around that elderly brother were ready to meet their Creator and God? How many had believed upon and lived for Jesus Christ? How many lived out a relationship with Him that all the power and sting of death could not break?

These are probing, sobering words. Words and thoughts we don't like to think of. Words and thoughts to put off. Can we, can you, afford to put them off any longer? Irregardless of what happens with this virus and us, death will come to all. Will we be ready when it does? Are you ready today? You can be. All you need do is confess Christ's name as your Savior, seek His forgiveness for your sin and wrongdoing, and ask Him to receive you to Himself. Are you ready to do that?....In Luke 18:8, Jesus asked this piercing question concerning His return; He asked that when He did come back, would He find faith on this earth? How will He find us, you? In faith.....faithful.....ready?

Blessings,
Pastor O