1 December 2013 - advent, your time

1 December 2013 - advent, your time

Therefore, stay awake!
For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.

This is the call.  We must be awake, alert, and attentive.  It is possible to miss the blessings of his coming if we're so caught up in normal affairs of "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage" that we miss what the LORD is telling us.  We need to get in the ark before the flood comes.  After is too late.  He provides the means of salvation but leaves it to us whether we will be taken by him or whether we will be left on our own to face the flood waters of circumstances.

This is why Paul calls us to "awake from sleep."  If we sleep we miss the fact that our salvation is at hand, "nearer now than when we first believed."  Yet attentiveness isn't simply passive.  Our whole being must reflect this attitude.  It is not just the day around us that should be filled with light.  We ourselves must reflect this by throwing "off the works of darkness" and putting "on the armor of light".

It isn't as though the LORD is hiding.  It isn't as though he is purposefully playing hard to get.  In fact "the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills."  This house, the Church, is the new ark that saves us from the flood waters of sin and death.  It is not hard to see if we look.  But we are all too ready to distract ourselves.  We need to be instructed in his ways and to walk in his paths.  This is the only way to the world for which we hope where "one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall the train for war again."

Since this is our desire let us seek him.  "Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord."  With the instruction from his word "let us walk in the light of the Lord!"