Remember the wife of Lot.
Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it,
but whoever loses it will save it.
What does Jesus mean by seeking to preserve our lives? He means that if we are too attached to things like "eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building" we will be unable to follow him. And if we are unable to follow him into the ark or out from the city of Sodom we will end up swept away with that destruction.
People who are ready for the LORD are so ready that they seem to have simply vanished when the LORD calls them. The world looks up from its commitments expecting to see us and we are already on our way with Jesus. This is how it is meant to be.
I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed;
one will be taken, the other left.
We should be so ready to be taken from the plight of destruction, whether flood or fire, that we move without a moment's notice. The more invested we are in this world, as if it were the only world, the more likely we will delay. The more we are reluctant to move the longer the tempter has to work. Delay moves us ever closer to disaster.
There is nevertheless a certain stability we have because of our readiness to follow Jesus. It is not the kind of stability that the world can offer. It is the infinitely greater stability of the truth.
I ask you,
not as though I were writing a new commandment
but the one we have had from the beginning:
let us love one another.
Sometimes to stay in place in our worldly lives we are called to act in ways that aren't loving. To prefer the world in these circumstances is very much to prefer Sodom. We are called to remain, not in situations of sin, but in the teaching of Christ.
Anyone who is so "progressive"
as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God;
whoever remains in the teaching has the Father and the Son.
The trick to this is that so much of our daily experience is filled with this world and the things of this world. We become disoriented and lose our sense of true north. We need to recalibrate. We need to fix our eyes on Jesus (see Hebrews 12:2) remembering our true citizenship is in heaven (see Philippians 3:2).
Open my eyes, that I may consider
the wonders of your law.
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