BE READY!

Here in my part of Ohio, we just endured another round of extreme spring weather.  It included a tornado watch, as well as a few tornado warnings (“…radar-indicated rotation has been identified…”).  The broadcast weather experts pulled no punches, making statements that were unapologetically direct: “If you are thinking of driving on this particular highway in the next half hour, DON’T.”  “If you are in this particular community, you need to get to your safe place NOW.”  “You need to take this seriously!”  

Behind this urgency was an awareness that people sometimes get complacent about even the most serious potential situations.  “Tornado watches?  They happen all the time around here.  Tornado warnings?  Come on, what is the chance that this is the real thing?”  All too often the following day’s news reports make it clear some persons may have ignored the warnings at great cost, perhaps even the cost of their lives.  

It’s a lesson we as followers of Jesus must take to heart when it comes being actively engaged in the work of the Kingdom in preparation for Jesus’ return.  This is how Jesus puts it in Mark 13.32-37:

“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with their assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch. Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’”

We Christians live under an “imminence watch.”   To say that Jesus’ return is “imminent” is to suggest His promised return could come at any moment, so we should live with urgency to obey Him and share His good news with others.  The New Testament repeatedly underscores this “imminence watch”—it’s in Paul’s teaching, Peter’s letters, and other places in Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels.  Just as a “tornado watch” means that conditions are right for the possibility of a tornado developing at any time, so we should keep an eye to the sky while living in awareness of Jesus’ promised return.

In fact, it might be said we Christians are under an “imminence warning.”  Just as  “tornado warning” means signs of a tornado have been identified, so Christians should live aware that the general Biblical signs pointing to Jesus’ soon return are all round us.  John told his original readers they were already in the last days, indeed the last hours (1 John 2.18), and though nearly 2000 years has passed since his statement, the “warning” has not been lifted.  

If we knew Jesus was returning tonight, what might we do differently today? To whom would we talk, what steps might we take, what issues might we address?  Allow me to be direct: do that NOW—live with an urgency that flows from the fact that we are closer than ever to the moment of Jesus’ promised return.  As Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 7.29-31: “What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short…For this world in its present form is passing away.”  

Keep watch!