CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, March 8, 2024 – The Gospel message is not for the faint of heart or procrastinators. If you live your life in fear, clinging to the flotsam and jetsam of the world for support and treading water rather than swimming for heavenly shores, you’ll never make it Home. Because the Gospel message is about urgency, about letting go of the world and being ready to leave wherever you are and whatever you’re doing at a moment’s notice, even and especially when you least expect it.

God gave his people the feast of unleavened bread as a reminder of the urgency of doing his will. Urgency means keeping God’s commands whether you’re ready to keep them or not, whether  you’ve added them to your schedule or not. The Hebrews had to leave Egypt so fast, their bread didn’t even have time to rise and they had to bake it and eat it unleavened. This is the purpose of keeping the feast of unleavened bread – as a tactile reminder of the urgency of doing God’s will. When God gives you his orders (which, by the way, you’re still free to disobey, though I strongly recommend against it), you don’t have time to sit around sipping tea and planning in minute detail how the orders should be carried out. Ask Noah how much time he had when God said “Go!” Sure, up until that point he had plenty of time when God was giving him the specifications for building the ark, but when go-time came, it was now or never for Noah.

Just like it’s now or never for us.

Jesus lived his ministry years as if he were under a state of emergency. He dropped all pretence of “business as usual”, immediately walking away from his carpentry business and home life in Nazareth when God gave the signal. He whittled his needs down to the bare minimum (food, water, warmth, and air) and spent each and every day serving God. Jesus didn’t just preach and teach the Gospel – he lived it. And in living it, he showed his followers how they likewise should live it.

The parable of the ten virgins and the oil in their lamps is for us. All ten had lamps, but only five had the forethought to fill their lamps with oil. The five that didn’t have oil tried to bum some from the other five, but the other five quite rightly refused to give them any, telling them to go buy what they needed, which they did. When they came back with their lamps freshly filled with the oil, fully expecting to be let into the wedding feast, they found the door shut. Yet even in the face of the closed and locked door, they still believed all they had to do was to call out and they would be let in. But it was too late for them. They’d slackened at the wrong time, and no amount of scrambling or pleading could make up for that.

All their last-ditch efforts were in vain.

The Gospel message is not for the faint of heart or for procrastinators. If you’re not living your life like Jesus did, like his disciples did, like Paul did – as if under a state of emergency – you’ll end up like the five virgins who got eternally locked out of the wedding feast.

The Gospel message is first and foremost one of urgency to serve God and to do his will day in and day out. If you’re not yet doing that, and if you don’t make up your mind to do it now – today – and for the rest of your days on Earth, you won’t make it Home.