Time- Mark 13:32-37
I watched A Thief In The Night as a wide-eyed baby Christian in 1976. The film opens with a woman awakened by an emergency radio broadcast. In her half sleep, she learns millions of people have vanished from the earth. When she realizes her husband is one of them she sinks to the side of her bed as the reporter quotes Jesus,
Therefore, be on the alert – for you do not know when the master is coming,.. lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.
This film effected me. After watching it I went on high alert! For a decade I fully expected Jesus to return at any moment. That might seem fanatical but I believed, with Jesus, anything might happen. It was 1976 and the Jesus Movement and Charismatic Renewal still had some momentum. It was as if Jesus, after failing in the mainline, had sent his servants out into the highways and byways and extended his banquet invitation to a multitude of unlikely characters such as myself. It was an amazing time! People were being saved and transformed. To my impressionable eyes it looked like the promised harvest – the sovereign ingathering of souls that would occur just before Christ’s return. My bags were packed, but not so well.
In that season, large numbers of people were exchanging their religion for rebirth into actual relationship with God. While Keith Green and his Last Days Ministries were sounding the alarm, myself and others went to DEFCON 1, setting aside our vocations in order to labor in these fields so ripe for harvest. To the best of our ability, we were awake and about the Father’s business.
We were mistaken though about the timing of Christ’s return. So were the writers of the New Testament. I don’t regret this and I doubt if any of those New Testament saints did either. We were only wrong in one sense. In another, more important one, we were right, in that we attempted obedience.
I thought I knew what Jesus meant when he said to be on the alert. I didn’t, at least not fully. I missed the spirit of the command because of an unhealthy kind of fear that undermines grace. Obeying God because you fear he might leave you behind is an inferior motivation for obedience. Fear exposes our unbelief in our Father’s keeping-competence. Fear creates an inordinate focus on personal holiness. Moving forward because you are being prodded from behind by fear is not the same as moving forward because you are being drawn by His love.
Today, my bags are packed a bit differently. I’m ready to go but I don’t have a clue when it will be. This is a better way to remain alert since scripture tells us neither the angels nor Jesus himself knows at what time this will happen.
Father, whether You come today or thousands of days from now, may you find our hearts alert and secure in your love, busy loving you and those around us. Amen.