The outrageous part of Jesus’ story about the ten young women in Matthew 25 is not that the women with oil refused to share their meagre supplies with the women who had not thought to bring enough for the long wait through the night. Neither is it that the women who had to go to the merchants to replenish their oil supplies were subsequently barred from entering late into the celebration.
The scandal is that anyone would not prepare adequately for such a time honored and important community event. It was unthinkable. Jesus original audience likely scoffed as if to indicate, ‘Well that would never happen in real life’!
It is unthinkable that we would fail to prepare adequately for an important event. Either too many other things would have to have crowded out the importance of the event in our thinking or the truth is we never really cared that much about it.
Jesus is urging his followers to consider carefully what is most important and to be sure to live into those things without being distracted by other less important parts of life.
This is a limited time opportunity!
