Life will Take you Unawares If You do These Six Things. Friday 32nd Week

Breakfast With the Word Friday 32nd Week Ordinary Time of the Year B

 

Luke 17:26-37

 

 

 

We are taken unawares when something happens by surprise or without expectation. In life, we do not actually know what can happen in the next moment.

 

It is like an event which God allows us to partake in but only God knows eventually when this event will end.

 

This calls for constant readiness, preparation and total attention on God. The gospel of today has an eschatological undertone of what can happen on the day the son of man will be revealed.

 

Surely, the day will take everyone unawares. But from today’s gospel, we have to delineate when life can take us unawares. Life will take us unawares;

 

1. When We take Everything for granted

 

Life will surely take you unawares when we underestimate, presume, suppose and undervalue many things.

 

This is when we fail to pay full attention and thus give little attention to many things. Jesus says that His day will be like the day of Noah when people are eating and drinking.

 

They took God for granted and never cared whether He exists or not. Then there was more wickedness on the surface of the earth. Consequently, the end takes them unawares.

 

 

Also, Life will take you unawares when you take life itself for granted, underestimate the importance of God and pay less attention about our end.

 

In life, nobody believes he can depart in the next second and thus we presume that nothing will happen.

 

 

When we take life for granted, life will surely take us for granted but when we prepare for life, life will surely prepare for us.

 

 

 

2. When We ignore Warnings 

Jesus also refers to the days of Noah, Sodom and Gomorrha and Lot’s wife. He says in the gospel that we have to remember Lot’s wife”. One peculiar characteristic of these people is that they ignored God’s warning.

 

 

In the scriptures, we find passages littered with warnings of the end time, faithlessness, prayerlessness, sin, falling in temptation, the unpredictability of life etc but sometimes we ignore them to focus on our earthly desires.

 

 

It is like when a city is warned of an impending earthquake and they choose to ignore the warning, the day the disaster will strike, no person will know. Whenever we ignore warnings, we are also making ourselves available for the unexpected.

 

God has constantly warned us about the destructive implications of many type of lives that we live, yet we pay deaf to them. When the consequences arise, then we begin to seek for whom to blame. Therefore, the time to think about our lives is now.

 

 

 

 

3. When we think Everything is always Normal

 

This is one of the mistakes we always make believing everything will always be normal as it uses to be. One thing that is synonymous with life is change. Even the person you trust before can change.

 

Do not live without expectation. The people of Sodom and Noah’s time continued their daily routines, eating and drinking and believing that everything will always be normal, until life takes them unawares.

 

Presently, no one is thinking about what can happen in the next minute. We always believe that things are always normal until we understand that things can never be normal.

 

 

 

4. When we fail to Prepare

 

Whenever we fail to prepare, we are inviting the unexpected. Life will take you unawares when we decide never to prepare for the future.

 

 

Today, Jesus takes time to instruct His disciples so that they will prepare and get ready for His second coming.

 

As we live, we have to remember that one day, the end will surely come. Failure to prepare and get ready for this may look disastrous.

 

5. Excessive Attention to Material Things

 

Sometimes when we pay too much attention to material acquisitions, we forget that these things will surely vanish one day. We forget that our soul also needs attention. Everything we fight to acquire will surely perish.

 

 

In the gospel, Jesus says that anyone who wants to safeguard his life will surely lose it. And on that day, no one can carry His possessions with Him.

 

 

Lot’s wife could not behold losing her possessions and she looked back. Sometimes the things we try to acquire will make us lose sight that we are just like people, who attended an event and surely we must go back to where we come from.

 

Therefore, As we make an effort in this world, let us also not forget our ultimate destination.

 

 

6. Inability to Focus forward

 

 

In this gospel, the message is that no one can predict the coming of the son of man. Hence, we have to look forward to that.

 

We have to focus our attention on our relationship with God, and to be with Him at the end of our earthly existence.

The past held Lot’s wife from moving forward. Therefore, Do not allow the things of the past and the things we have now to make us lose sight of the future.

 

Life will always take us unawares if we are carried away by the past and by the things we see in the world. Let us Always look forward and prepare for the life to come.

 

 

May God bless you dearest and give us the grace to prepare for our heavenly destination all the time. May He surely be with you all the days of your life. Amen

 

You may read

 

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