Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

As Jesus gets closer and closer to his death, he takes the time to coach his followers on what it means to wait well,

because they and the rest of the church will be waiting

for his return for quite some time. We still are, in fact. When we're waiting for something,

that process can produce a lot of different emotions in us. Maybe you grow especially impatient and

frustrated. That usually happens when you're really excited about what you're waiting for. On the other

hand, if you're not looking forward to it, maybe you're filled with dread or maybe you forget altogether that it's going to happen. Jesus knows humanity, and he knows that we're more likely to treat his return like the thing we're not super excited about. First of all, we don't have any concept of what we're entering into, so it's more common to be scared of something like that because it feels like a bit of an unknown.

Second, it's easier to want things we are familiar with, like kids and husbands and vacations to Croatia,

and those things take up our mental and emotional energy instead.

In today's reading, Jesus encourages us to wait well, then he tells us why that's important. He starts out with the parable of the

Ten Virgins, which is a cult who steward our time wisely while we wait. They all have lamps,

but only half of them get oil. They just don't think about the future. They live in the moment.

It slipped their minds that there was anything they might need to prepare for. This reminds me of what

Jesus has been saying so frequently for the past few days.

Stay awake, don't be lulled to sleep by the world and its priorities.

Especially early on in Christianity, there were people who even took this literally.

They would stay awake through the night, watching for his return.

But as with lots of things, Jesus says, this seems to be more of a spiritual command.

Don't zone out and just be carried along by the world in its culture, especially because God and

his kingdom often run contrary to those things. By the way, in scripture, oil often

represents the Holy Spirit. So if we want to boil this parable down to one clear point, it would be

this.

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