“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Ephesians 5:14 ESV

Coming home for lunch yesterday, I entered the house to the sound of a screaming alarm! It didn’t take me long to figure out what that sound was because I had been alarmed by it all week. It was an alarm clock that refused to turn off! Having tried everything I could think of, I did the next to the last thing that would silence the ridiculous noise forever!

I have 2 clocks in my living room. One is a decorative cuckoo clock and the other an alarm clock that faces out from our TV area. It’s lighted face works well as I can instantly know the time from anywhere in the room, night or day. Somehow, when we moved some things around last week, that alarm clock had gotten turned ‘on.’ Everyday about 11am, it did what it was made to do… BEEP BEEP BEEP! Though I had tried numerous times, I could not get it to shut off! It was a conundrum that was driving me crazy! So I googled it!

Technology comes with it’s pluses and minuses. I discovered that this clock was put out about 2006. History had shown that I wasn’t the ONLY one with this particular problem. One guy got so frustrated, he had taken a sledge hammer to his! The internet of 2019 allowed me to find the owners manual online and learn that you had to hold 2 particular buttons down at the same time to disable the alarm feature! I’d have NEVER figured that one out on my own! The verse today presents a similar conundrum!

Anyone who has not been ‘born again’ will add this verse to their ‘can’t understand it’ list. That list then becomes the reason they don’t ever READ the Bible since, “I can’t understand it anyway.” The merry-go-round continues through life until they either ‘wake up’ and live or die from deliberate ignorance. The Lord of the Universe, Jesus Christ, tells us that men exist in a deadly sleep. His offer and purpose is to wake us up and shine on, in and through us! But ONLY if we WANT to wake up! Oh… there is no snooze button!

Inside of every person exists the knowledge that there is a God, that we are sinful failures and that unless something is done, we WILL all perish in judgment. How can sinful people enter God’s perfect presence? It is clear God WANTS us there WITH Him. But WE have to CHOOSE to wake up! God’s alarm clock regularly goes off in our hearts. We can’t unplug it or smash it. We can either wake up to it or try to live WITH it’s piercing noise by artificial means.

That fact that Jesus Christ WANTS to shine on me should be enough to motivate me. His light will either highlight my deadly sin or highlight the Savior who rescues me from it. His manual, The Bible, tells me all I need to know… if I will just wake up and simply follow His instructions. He will not ‘SNOOZE’ or STOP until I either respond… or die without a response! BEEP BEEP BEEP!