Luke 12:32-48

Posted on August 04, 2022 in: General News

Luke 12:32-48

One time, as a 5th-grader, I sat in a morning science class near my friends. I recall that I was fooling around somehow: side comments, jokes, snickering, and certainly not paying attention. Abruptly, the teacher called on me and gave me a complex question regarding the day’s material. Like a deer in headlights, I stammered for an answer before she cut me off—mercifully. With gravity in her voice, she then told me: “See, Michael, life will throw you curveballs; you need to be ready for them….”

This weekend, Jesus gives his disciples the same warning: be prepared! At an hour we don’t expect, God will come and we will be called upon.

This sobering reality can be taken in two ways. In general, Jesus says that the “end times” will arrive quickly. The earliest Christians expected the second coming to be much sooner than 2022… We’re still here, but we know “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.” Regardless of when this happens each of us will face our own end. The implication is the same. We need to invest what little precious time we have preparing for eternity. Like “minutemen” infantry from the Revolutionary War, we need to be “ready at a moment’s notice” to go to heaven. What does that look like?

Faithfulness. Mother Theresa said, “We are called upon not to be successful, but to be faithful.” Just as in a romantic relationship fidelity is paramount, so too in our relationship with God. He longs for us to be faithful by living a life of holiness and not “fooling around” with sin. To do this, we need the virtue of faith: our active response, our assent, to God and all that He is. Abraham embodied faith. God promised the childless old-man numerous descendants; later on, God called him to sacrifice this promise in his son. Abraham knew that God was not a liar, that God would be faithful to His promise, and even if he couldn’t see how, he trusted and drew his knife. Yes, God stopped him because it was a trial of faith and also an embodied foreshadowing. He would send His own Son as a sacrificial offering, thousands of years later…

Faith gives us the ability to do the things God asks us to do, even if we don’t understand the outcome. Faith gives us the power to pray when we least feel like it, feed the hungry or change the diaper or anoint the dying when we don’t want to, and see the reality of God and His ways when life seems otherwise impossible. With it, we see God everywhere; without it, we see Him nowhere. With it, we live for Him; without it we live only for ourselves. This week, when you wake up each morning, say what the disciples said: “Lord, increase our faith!” (Luke 17:5).