THIS WORLD IS NOT OURS; DON’T UNDERESTIMATE
A farmer noticed that every autumn, a tragedy played out in his cornfields. All summer long, families of field mice had made their homes among the growing plants. They ate and slept, they worked and played and raised their families. The mice imagined that those green fields belonged to them.
But then one day, at the end of the summer, the mouse community got an awful shock. The farmer entered the fields with his harvesting machinery, and all of a sudden those comfortable summer homes and food pantries that the mice had enjoyed came crashing down on their heads.
Can you see any similarity here between field mice and people? Do we look upon this world as our home and so day after day go off to work, earn money, play, fall in love, get married and have children, imagining that this world is our home and will always be our home? If you remember the mice though, you might want to ask yourself: "Am I forgetting that this world is not mine...that it’s just a temporary place to stay...that harvest day is nearly upon us?" (John Jeske "Connecting Sinai to Calvary" p. 179)
Knowing that a day of judgment is coming, however, is not the same as being ready for it. German intelligence knew that the Allies were going to invade on June 6th, 1944. How then do you explain that many German officers, including the commanding general, went on leave the weekend of the attack? It’s because they underestimated the strength and the resolve of the Allies. They figured that even if the Allies did attack, they would have time to get back to the front line to sort things out. It was a fatal underestimation.
Are you making the same fatal underestimation in regard to Judgment Day? Do you treat your faith like a weekend hobby taking leave of it Monday through Saturday thinking should Judgment Day happen on one of those days you’ll still be able to talk your way into heaven?
(Source: from a sermon by Daniel Habben, "Divine D-Day is Coming" 7/14/08, SermonCentral.com)