Be Ready

I read this morning in my copy of 'The Daily Light' devotional these two verses, and they struck me in a way that I had never really thought of them before. I wanted to share it somewhere.

Luke 21:34 - Take heed to yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly.

What I noticed there is that "the cares of this life" is in there among carousing and drunkenness. All are distractions from where our focus must be - on the mission the Lord gave us, (the great commission), and serving Him. The rest of this passage goes on to say, "pray always that you may be counted worth to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man." In other words, to not be ashamed of our lack of attention to what Jesus is doing and when He is coming.

Then another verse in this devotional is in 1 Thess 5, somewhere between v. 2 and 5 - "The day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, 'Peace and safety!' then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman."

If we are not prepared for the "day or the hour in which the Son of Man is coming" it would be like a pregnant woman going on with her normal life, as though she were not pregnant. Just caring about herself, just carrying on with 'business as usual' without making any preparation for a baby to come.

In the same way, while a pregnant woman does not know the time that she will go into labor, she can't say she didn't know that the labor pains would come. She can get a pretty good idea that there is a due time for them to start, though the exact time is not predictable. The point is, the labor pains are inevitable. But they herald a great event coming!

The thing that I found the Holy Spirit saying to me as I read this was to remember that the end of all things is certain, and is sure, and it will come. But it is a good thing, in the end, ushering in the fulness of the Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven!

May I live caring more for the things of eternity than for the things "of this life" and may the things that I do in this life be holy unto the Lord.

1 Thess 5:6 "But you are not in darkness, so that this day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober."