As it was in the days of Noah,
so it will be in the days of the Son of Man;
they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage up to the day
that Noah entered the ark,
and the flood came and destroyed them all.
In past times the world seemed to be going on as it always had. People were more or less hypnotized by the routine of daily life, unable to recognize the signs, or to heed the warnings of impending judgment. Those who had sufficient faith to respond to the call of God seemed to others to be at least eccentric and possibly crazy. If one was not regularly in conversation with God, the construction of an ark didn't seem particularly useful before the rain began to fall. Noah's faith allowed him to do what would later be proven to be necessary before it was obviously so. It gave him the courage to stand out and endure ridicule for the sake of obedience.
they were eating, drinking, buying,
selling, planting, building;
on the day when Lot left Sodom
Once we begin to believe and obey the word of God we must still be cautious about the temptation to look back to what we left behind. This was a problem for those who wandered in the desert after being liberated from Egypt. It was a problem for Lot's wife. It was the reason why Jesus said that those who looked back after putting their hand to plow were unfit for the Kingdom (see Luke 9:62). It wasn't that he didn't want them. The issue in all of these cases was that they were compromised by a kind of gravity that pulled them toward the earthly and away from the spiritual. They had tasted freedom, but looking back caused them not to pursue with the vigor that was necessary to reach salvation.
On that day, someone who is on the housetop
and whose belongings are in the house
must not go down to get them,
and likewise one in the field
must not return to what was left behind.
We need to reverse the perspective we typically have in which the things of this world are those that are urgent, and the spiritual are secondary. We must be willing to make a break with any temporary material goods if God's call demands it of us. We must be willing, at least virtually, to leave behind all we have to respond to his summons.
I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed;
one will be taken, the other left.
And there will be two women grinding meal together;
one will be taken, the other left.
We may look almost identical, from an external perspective, to others in the world. But our destiny is not necessarily the same as theirs. If we don't insist on clinging to our current conditions exactly as we now experience them we will be free to receive the salvific work of God in our lives. Whether he desires to keep us here where we are, saving us from exile, or whether he desires to move us to a place of refuge from impending strife, we can have the freedom to follow him. It will help if we make a spiritual resolution, aided by grace, empowered by the Spirit, never to choose anything instead of his will. Though we are fallen and fickle and liable to disobedience he will nevertheless help us to keep such a noble commitment, since it is he himself who inspired us to make it. We must not be like those described in the reading from Wisdom who lost themselves in the beauty of created things. We should instead rejoice in that beauty as a revelation of the one who created it all.
For from the greatness and the beauty of created things
their original author, by analogy, is seen.
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