Exhortation

“Repent the day before you die,” the Rabbis said. It sounds as if they’re encouraging wickedness. We can do what we like, sin to our heart’s content, and then reverse it all with a deathbed conversion.

But the Rabbis were sly. The kicker is that we can never know the day of our death, and so if we’re going to repent the day before we die, we had better repent every day.

It is appointed every man to die, and after that the judgment. Death is one of the ways God comes to us, one of the times He draws near to assess. But it’s only one of many ways. God comes near to judge in every moment of crisis, and these crises are as unpredictable as death.

Jesus stands with the rabbis on this issue. If we want to be prepared for His coming – whatever form that coming takes – we had better be busy investing the talents Jesus left with us.

Watch, be alert, Jesus said to His disciples. But watchfulness is not passive sitting-around-waiting-for-Jesus-to-come. Being watchful means pursuing a life of continual repentance.