Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, March 19, 2023
by Dr. Kimberly Leetch, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: Life can be full when you are prepared to appreciate the little moments, rather than wishing away your life waiting on the big ones.
When we are kids, we spend a lot of time waiting for life to happen. We wait for Christmas. We wait for birthdays. We wait for milestones. We plan for our future, and it seems everything we do is in preparation for that future.
As young adults, we wait for that perfect someone. We wait for babies to arrive. We wait for that big promotion and spend time planning for our future.
Something happens in middle years—often called a midlife crisis—when we realize that we’re still waiting, and half our life is gone. We begin to see that the elusive big thing we’ve been planning for (writing that novel, becoming the company’s CEO, that epic trip overseas) may never come. The crisis comes when we ask ourselves, “Is this all there is?” We realize we’ve spent our whole lives living for our future and our past is just—poof—gone! Sometimes depression sets in or we go crazy trying to force some of the things we believed we were waiting for—the expensive car, the new partner.
Jesus’ story tells of ten brides waiting for a bridegroom. Five of them were prepared—they had enough oil to outlast the night. Five of them were unprepared—they had to go into town for more oil and when they returned, they had missed their opportunity.
The way I see it, Jesus’ words were a warning: be prepared. As long as we are only looking at an unspecified time way out in the future, we will always be waiting. But life has a way of offering us beautiful moments just when we least expect them. If we are not ready, we might just miss them.
I have spent much of my middle years reshaping my own attitude and expectations for life. Recently I took a plane trip with my teenage daughter. The flight arrived quite late on a Friday night (1:30am), and when we got to the rental car booth, they told us there were no cars left, despite our having reserved in advance. I was faced with a choice: freak out or figure it out. I stood there at the counter weighing my choices. I talked it over with my daughter. We could try to get a hotel near the airport and try again in the morning. We could sleep on the bench at the rental counter. Then the worker behind the counter, who had been watching us mull it over, told us to wait—even though it was after hours and the company had no more cars, he did have access to the cars in their budget lot. While we waited, he walked across the lot, retrieved a car, and said there was no way he was going to do the same for the two parties that had just arrived after us. And then he promptly fetched two more cars for those parties anyway.
If we had freaked out or rushed back to the airport to throw a fit, we would have missed the beautiful moment. We would have missed the kindness of a tired worker who just wanted to go home. It was my reminder to keep awake, to watch for those moments, and to notice and appreciate them when they happen. Life is too short to wait for the big moments and miss all the small ones. It’s the ones we weren’t planning for or expecting that make life full.
