Being ever-ready for God

Have you ever forgotten your lunch at school? It's time to eat, and you have no food and no money. You're SO hungry, and you don't know what to do!

Jesus would never forget lunch. He believed in always being ready -- for lunch, and for God. In this week's Gospel (Matthew 25:1-13), He talks about that.

"The coming of the kingdom of heaven," said Jesus, "will be like ten girls who took lamps lit with oil to meet a man for a feast. Only five girls brought extra oil. By the time the man arrived, the foolish girls had to go get more oil. When they got back, the feast had already started, and the doors were locked. Stay awake, then, because you don't know when the kingdom of heaven will come."

If you're hungry and forgot your lunch, you'll probably ask friends to share their lunches, or to give you money to buy food. The foolish girls in the Gospel story must have thought the same thing: "Oh, well -- we forgot extra oil. We'll just borrow some."

But when you try to borrow, it doesn't always work. Maybe your friends don't want to share, or don't have money for you to borrow. In the Gospel, the girls with extra oil didn't have enough for the others. The other girls were as worried as a kid without lunch. What were they going to do?

If no one will help you get food, you have to skip lunch. Then you feel grumpy and hungry for the rest of the day. The foolish girls must have felt grumpy, too! They missed out on a feast because they forgot what they had to bring.

The wedding feast in Jesus' story is really God's kingdom. We don't know when Jesus will come back, so we always have to be ready. But how can you get ready for Jesus?

Well, if you forget lunch once, you'll never do it again -- and if you know now that Jesus could come back any time, you'll get ready by praying and loving others from now on. You can borrow lunch money, but you can't "borrow" being good from another person. When Jesus comes, you have to have your lunch all packed!

PRAYER FOR THE WEEK: Jesus, teach me to be ready for everything: lunch, being good, or waiting for you to come back! Amen.

(11-07-96)

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