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Night Thief

by Jerry Ousley  
9/02/2011 / Christian Living

Those of you who have experienced being robbed know what it feels like. There is not only anger at losing things that belonged to you but also a strong sense of violation. We have been robbed twice so far in our lives. The first time it was gasoline. Deb and I lived in a meager mobile home in a small mobile home park. Our son Jeremy was just an infant. Money was scarce and very tightly budgeted in our household. The vehicle I drove to work was easy on gas and normally I could get by on one full tank per week. That weekend we had filled up the car in preparation for the coming week. But on Monday morning when I went out to drive to work I suddenly noticed that the gas gauge read nearly empty. I sorted it out through my head hadn't we filled it up on Saturday? Yep, I distinctly remembered doing that. Then it hit me like a bolt of lightning! Someone had siphoned the gasoline right out of our tank during the night. We didn't have the money to fill it up again, but fortunately one of the local stations knew us and agreed to allow us a tank of gasoline on credit until Friday.

The second time occurred when our children were young. We had gone on a weekend camping trip. When we got back home on Sunday afternoon we found the glass in our door smashed and the door unlocked. Someone had broken into our house and stolen a few objects including our VCR. They must have been in a real hurry because the remote was left sitting on the end table in plain sight. The value was too little to turn in to insurance and so we took the financial brunt of the crime. But the feeling of a stranger or strangers wandering around in our house taking whatever they had a fancy to take and looking in our personal drawers was a mighty strange feeling indeed.

You'd better bet that had I known these thieves were coming I would have either sat up waiting for them or at least set my alarm clock to half an hour before they were to arrive. I'll say one thing about it; had I known they were coming we wouldn't have been missing anything.

I read a story one time about a couple. The wife was terrified of a burglar breaking into their house during the night. Nearly every night she'd wake her husband telling him she had heard a noise downstairs and insisted on him get up to check it out. Of course no one was there and he would go back to bed. But one night she heard a noise, had him get up to check it out and he dutifully did his night round without complaint so he could get back to sleep. However, when he went downstairs and turned the light on, sure enough a burglar was standing in their living room. They man gave a slight chuckle and introduced himself saying, "I want you to come upstairs and meet my wife; she's been looking for you for years!"

In Matthew 24:42-51 Jesus compares his second coming to that of a thief in the night. He said, "Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore, you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect." (Matthew 24:42-44). The Bible also tells us that no one knows when He will be returning except God the Father. We could try to second guess God in attempt to figure it out. Many have already tried and will probably try again. The simple truth is that no one knows. The best thing to do is to be ready. We try to be ready for thieves by installing alarm systems, surveillance cameras and so forth. But an alarm or camera has not yet been built that will give us ample warning when Jesus Christ returns. We won't know it until it has happened.

The best thing to do is to be ready. Make certain that we have applied the gift of salvation to our lives and that we are ready to meet God. That's how we watch for His coming. No one can go without sleep. Spiritually speaking however, we are told by Jesus Himself to watch. We do this by being saved. So let's make sure we're ready to go and that way when He comes like a night thief, we'll be prepared and the devil can't steal that away from us.

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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