You too, be ready!

The guys in our Bible study had decided a few weeks back that we'd like to take a few weeks' pause from 2 Corinthians and instead read some Advent sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Last week I decided that this morning we'd read a sermon of his with Luke 12:35-40 serving as the text.

Last night I woke up at 4:45 because I heard someone walking around the foyer of our apartment, shut the door, then quickly run down the five flights of spiral stairs. Knowing that break-ins are very common here, I feared the worst. I quickly got up to check our house. All looked sound.

Right now we have a friend staying with us for a week, and looking at the couch where he was sleeping, it looked like he was still there; I could swear it was him I heard breathing as he slept. But even on the odd chance that it was he who had gotten up and left at such an early hour--he wasn't home when I got up at 7:30--the whole incident was a wake-up call (no pun intended).


Then this morning we read Luke 12:39-40, in which Jesus warns, "But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have allowed his house to be broken into. You too, be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour that you do not expect." Wow. Talk about bringing Scripture to light! Seriously, any day we could be going about our business, and Jesus will return, as suddenly and unexpectedly as whomever may or may not have been in my apartment last night. We will not be able to choose sides or shape up our lives then; we'll only be left in an unchosen reaction to his coming. How we live and what we choose now will determine whether we will at that day lift up our heads and see his coming as a thing of unimaginable joy, relief, and beauty; or else we'll melt in shame and fear, "our faces aflame" (Isaiah 13:8) in seeing Christ the King as a terror that humbles our worst of nightmares.