The other evening my husband and I were clicking through the channels on the television looking for something to watch. We happened to scroll by the local news and it had a special report on. Locally the hospitals are full, and they were asking people to wear masks and be careful to social distance. We kept it on for a few minutes and listened as one of the hospital administrators was describing what it was like in the hospital. He talked about expanding the morgue because they needed the space for more bodies. It was a pretty bleak picture.

The next day we went to the store. We expected that there would be lots of people wearing masks and following the directions given on the news. Surprise, surprise, it was not so. Hardly anyone was wearing a mask and at one store, even the checkers were not wearing masks.

So we get in the car and I say to my husband, “What gives? Am I living in an alternate reality? Is what the man said on television true or not?” He didn’t have an answer but as we drove home and I looked around, I thought, “These are like the days of Noah.”

You see, when Noah was building his ark, he was preaching to the people about the coming flood. He was warning them but they were not listening. It was as if he wasn’t speaking at all. Jesus described it this way, “But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.” Matthew 24: 37-39

Most people have heard about the Lord’s return. They have been warned that they should get ready, but they are not paying attention; they are not listening. They have heard about it so much that they have grown dull of hearing. They are going about their business as usual, either unaware or unconcerned that in fact there will come a day of reckoning with the Lord.

Are you like that? Am I? Do we think that just because it happened yet, that it will not happen at all? Have we even become so hardened to the message that we have become scoffers? The apostle Peter talked about a time when men would be come like that: “knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” 2 Peter 3: 3-4

It’s easy to hear a warning and ignore it. It’s easy to ignore something we have heard over and over again and think, “Not going to happen to me. Probably not going to happen at all.” Let’s not be like those during the days of Noah. Let’s be ready for the Lord’s return.

Image by Hany Alashkur. Courtesy of Pixabay