In Matthew 23:37-39 (NIV) we read Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate!”
And in Luke’s gospel we read that, “As [Jesus] approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” Luke 19:41-44 (NIV)
There may be no greater danger to our spiritual wellbeing than to be unwilling to receive that which Jesus wants to do for us right now because there is a sense in which every moment is a time of God’s coming to us. Every moment is unique. It comes and it goes and it will never be duplicated. And embedded in each moment is a gift from God to us — something tailor made just for us that — if responded to — will not only draw us nearer to his heart but will become something that will make us the blessing to others God intends us to be.
To be fully responsive to what God wants to do in our lives right now is every bit as urgent for us as it was for the people Jesus wept over. And the fall out of indifference is every bit as serious: desolation and disaster.
But we need not let not come to that. “Lord, make us better listeners. Give us humble hearts ever ready every moment for all that you want to be to us. Amen.”
