Today's passage is Matthew 24:40-44.
Jesus says one of two people doing a job will be taken. He says to be ready because we don't know when the time will come. If a man knows robbers are coming, he will be ready. But no one knows when to expect the Lord's coming.
When my son was born we weren't ready.
We knew he was coming because we'd had nine months warning. But we weren't ready. My wife did not have a bag packed to go to the hospital.
We didn't have a crib ready at home. We didn't have a name ready.
It was almost as if we weren't expecting a baby.
When my American daughter was born her mother and I were even less ready than my first wife and I had been.
We were less ready because we weren't married.
Not only did we have nothing practical ready for the baby, we weren't emotionally or spiritually ready for our daughter.
After our daughter was born, her mother asked me to bring some things from home.
One of those things was her journal.
Because I was in a rush and was carrying all of the things in my hands instead of putting them in a bag, I dropped many of them.
The journal fell to the floor and opened.
As I picked it up I read one of the open pages.
She described how she didn't want to live with me anymore.
She wondered how she could get rid of me.
I didn't expect to read that. I didn't expect such news at the birth of our daughter.
But I should have been ready.
I had begun an adulterous affair with her a few months before my first wife died.
She had repeatedly warned me that she didn't think she could live successfully with another adult.
She had rejected my marriage proposal.
I should have expected to read what I already knew.
But my unrealistic hope for marriage and the thrill of our child's birth painted my situation in the happy color I wanted.
I denied the reality of my circumstances.
I did not expect events to go differently from what I wanted.
I wasn't ready for reality.
When I read that journal page I felt robbed of my dream.
For five years I kept getting robbed of that dream, that fantasy myth because I would not accept my circumstances.
And until I accepted them, I couldn't get ready for repentance.
Eventually, by God's grace alone, I did accept my circumstances and did see my sin in it all and I did repent.
I have little faith that I am more clearsighted than I once was.
Seeing so many of my sins gives me no confidence that I will successfully avoid the worst of them in the days to come.
It's the readiness for repentance that concerns me now.
That's what I pray for.
Lord, forgive my long denial of my reality. Help me see it more clearly so I can repent more deeply. Help me accept that my circumstances were all my fault. Help me forgive those I blamed for my hurt. Protect me from myself, Lord. Open my eyes to the truth of my life. Pour your grace on me that I might love you more dearly and through you love others more truly.
