Monday 17 Dec 2012

Monday Reading: Matthew 24:4-8

Key Verse: Matthew 24:6
6  And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

Devotion:
Well, Christmas is getting close now and many people around you may be running round like headless chickens; but there is no getting away from the fact that it will happen in a few days’ time! So now we have that out the way, let’s move on. This is different though, because we know that Christmas is going to happen on the same day that it did last year and nobody will change that any time soon! Yes the actual date of Christmas may well have changed over time as we try to figure out the calendar, but Christmas day is Christmas day and we all know it is 25th December.

But the time that God has chosen for Christ to return is a date that we do not know. We will have plenty of warnings about when they could be because the bible describes the things that will start to happen so that we will know the date is getting closer. But then if we open our eyes and look at the world around us we will see that most of those things are happening right now and all around us!

In other words we are getting closer to the time when Christ is going to come back. That then poses us with a bit of a problem because we know that when that time gets here we are not going to have any more chances! We will have run out of time and we will not have any more left!

But let us not grow weary for all the things that will happen because God does not want us to become despondent just because everyone else around us is cracking up! God has already said that He has gone to prepare a place for us and has promised that He is going to come back and take us home. He has surrounded us by people who love us and can show us a bit more of His love through what they do for us. God continues to want us to be ready and to have made all the right choices before He comes back. Then there will be times when we just will not want to be around because all we will see is death and destruction – we certainly would not want to be caught up in that whilst it goes on. But God has already shown us His love through everything He has done for us; His love goes far beyond what we can do. God’s love knows no bounds, but the time before He has to show us the difficult choices is finite and it will come to an end!

Points to Ponder:
What do you see happening that has been foretold already?

Are you seeing God’s justice starting to be carried out?