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This devotion pairs with this weekend’s Lutheran Hour sermon, which can be found at lhm.org.
Romans 13:11 – Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.
5:15 a.m. It was the earliest I’d ever set my alarm for. I was ten years old, and I did not trust myself to wake up, so I set a second alarm for 5:20 a.m. on my watch. And then, as a third measure, I wrote myself a note. I wrote it, picturing the white mountains glistening in the daylight, covered in fresh snow. I wrote it in ALL CAPS plus three exclamation points and taped to the top of my clock, “WAKE UP MICHAEL YOURE GOING SKIING TODAY!!!” I had to make myself see that today is different. But, even if I had failed to get myself out of bed, I’m sure my family wouldn’t have let me miss the adventure. They would have carried me to the car.
The resurrection of Jesus is a wake-up call. But sometimes, we treat it like a dormant fact . What’s a dormant fact? A few years ago, my wife and I bought burial plots, final resting places for our mortal remains. Recently, I was looking through my filing cabinet and saw the deed for those plots. I thought, “Oh yeah, we bought those, didn’t we.” It felt significant for a moment, but it quickly became a dormant fact. Sometimes Christians treat the resurrection of Jesus as such. We think, “It was a special deal God did for Jesus a long time ago. Because of it, I trust God will take care of me after I die, but beyond that, what does it matter for my daily life?”
It was because of this way of thinking that Paul wrote this note in Romans. The Christians in Rome had let the truth about Jesus become a dormant fact. They hadn’t lost their faith. They hadn’t cursed Christ. They hadn’t stopped going to church altogether. But they were being dragged back into bed with the world. And it may be so for us. We need the Holy Spirit’s wake-up call to rouse us from sleep. Christ is risen! He is ruling at God’s right hand. He is King over every plot. One day He will return, maybe today, to take it all back for God. He will raise the dead. He will shake the sleep from our eyes with the light of God’s new day. And that day has already dawned. It’s not a dormant fact. It’s a wake-up call into an adventure with God.
A friend of mine was telling me about a big trip her family was getting ready to take when she was a little girl. She was excited for the adventure, but not for the 5 a.m. wake-up call. When it came, she crawled back into bed and fell asleep again. She doesn’t remember what happened next. When she opened her eyes, she thought she missed the trip. But there she was, in the car with her family. Someone had carried her.
WE PRAY: Dear Jesus, let the morning bring us word of Your unfailing love. Amen.
This Daily Devotion was written by Rev. Dr. Michael Zeigler, Speaker for The Lutheran Hour.
Reflection Questions:
- What helps you wake up in the morning?
- Are there indications in your life that you’ve been treating the Resurrection as a dormant fact?
- What new adventures is God calling you into with Jesus? (Read the book of Acts for ideas.)
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