Quote from Forum Archives on April 12, 2012, 12:41 pm

Posted by: edwrather <edwrather@...>

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The Burning Bush Devotional
There are 17,000 Subscribers to the Email Devotional

04.12.2012

Preoccupied

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 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 NKJV.

And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of
sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The
night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works
of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. - Romans 13:11-12 NKJV.

In La Crescenta, a suburb of Los Angeles, California, a man had an
unexpected close encounter with a four or five hundred pound black bear.
After hearing a helicopter (which was tracking the bear), Vaz Terdandenyan
walked outside his apartment to see what was happening. Vaz was also texting
his employer at the same time. He later shared this: "I was walking down the
stairs, and I looked up and saw the bear coming up the stairs towards me. So
I turned back and ran for my life."

Vaz Terdandenyan was preoccupied with thoughts of his day and of life when
he nearly walked into the paws of a bear. We have all seen videos of others
who have been focused on texting while walking and experienced unpleasant
consequences. I remember the video of a woman texting and walking into a
hotel swimming pool. I read recently of a woman texting while walking down a
pier, and then she walked into a river. According to the New York Times
(01.08.12), more than a thousand people seek emergency treatment resulting
from texting while walking.

The Lord Jesus will return for those who know Him as their Savior. It is
called, the rapture, when Jesus returns in the air for His followers, and
the apostle Paul writes about this in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, "For the Lord
Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an
archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise
first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with
them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be
with the Lord."

The apostle Paul tells believers in Romans 13 "it is high time to awake out
of sleep." In other words, we need to stop our preoccupation with the
trivial things of life because the Lord could come at any time. "Therefore,"
Paul says, "let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the
armor of light."

For those who do not know Jesus as their Savior, the days prior to the flood
are a warning when the people then, "were eating and drinking, marrying and
giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark." So many people
are just as preoccupied with the trivial, mundane things of life, as the was
the man who nearly walked into the bear. If a person does not know Jesus as
their Savior, it will be much worse than walking into a bear, to be left
behind here on this earth.

Open your eyes! Open your heart! Open your mind! Jesus is coming again, and
that time is closer than ever before!

Copyright © 2012. Ed Wrather. The Burning Bush website has been online since
January 31, 1998. On June 8, 1998 the email version of the Burning Bush
Devotional was first sent. Ed Wrather began writing devotionals in the early
1990s. The distribution of these first devotionals was primarily through the
Burning Bush Newsletter sent to prison facilities throughout the United
States and Canada.

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