Hey friends, welcome to today's edition of Our Daily Bread.

The devotional for today titled Making Every Moment Count was written by James Banks.

The halted hands of a pocket watch in a library's archives at the University of North Carolina

tell a harrowing tale. They mark the exact moment, 819 and 56 seconds. The watch's owner,

Elisha Mitchell, slipped and fell to his death at a waterfall in the Appalachian Mountains on the

morning of June 27, 1857.

Mitchell, a professor at the university, was gathering data to defend his correct claim that the

peak he was on, which now bears his name, Mount Mitchell, was the highest one east of the Mississippi.

His grave is located at the mountain's summit, not far from where he fell.

As I ascended that mountain peak recently, I reflected on Mitchell's story and my own mortality

and how each of us has only so much time, and I ponder Jesus' words in Matthew 24 about his return as he spoke to his disciples

on the Mount of Olives. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour

when you do not expect him. Jesus clearly indicates that none of us knows either the moment

he'll return and establish his kingdom

forever or when he may summon us to leave this world and come to him. But he tells us to be prepared

and keep watch. Tick, tick, the clockwork of each of our lives is still in motion. But for how long?

May we live our moments in love with our merciful Savior, waiting and working for him.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Matthew chapter 24 verses 36 through 44 but about that day or hour

no one knows not even the angels in heaven nor the sun but only the father as it was in the days of

Noah so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the

flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage. Up to the day Noah entered

the ark, and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them

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