For many people the coming of Christ will be a sudden and shocking event. Paul says that Jesus will come like ‘a thief in the night,’ and he isn’t thinking of a modern-day ‘cat-burglar’ who slips in unnoticed. He is thinking of something much more violent such as was probably the case with most robberies in these times. Paul envisages a world that is in a drunken-like slumber, each person living in their own dreamworld completely oblivious to the reality of what is actually happening around them. This is what people are like who pull the blanket of self-deception over their own heads and imagine there is nothing outside their little lifestyle cocoon. Reality is going to crash in on these people, says Paul. Jesus will come in his glory as judge of the earth and break open the worlds of all those who live in deception. They will be like passengers on a sinking ship who try to hide from the inevitable by hiding under their blankets in their bunks. The cold water of reality will drench them eventually and the first burst of it will dissolve every pretence and fantasy that they lived in. This should not be the case, however, for the Christian, says Paul. To us, Jesus’ coming will not be shocking like the invasion of a thief in the night, for we are not to slumber in the bed of worldly deception. We must be sober-minded and awake to the greater realities of what God is doing in the world. Then Jesus’ coming will be the greatest joy.
Ask God to expose you more and more to his reality and the reality of what is going on in the world.
Read 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
