Morning Prayer with Pastor Sean Pinder
You Won't Always Have More Time
The change YOU keep putting off for "later" is counting on a tomorrow that is not promised. There is something YOU know YOU need to make right. A pattern to break, a relationship to mend, a step toward God YOU have been meaning to take. And YOU are not refusing it — YOU are just delaying it. Later, YOU tell yourself. When things settle down. When the timing is better. But Luke 16 tells a story Jesus Himself gave as a warning to the person who assumes there will always be more time. Two men lived very different lives. One had everything and lived comfortably, day after day, with no sense of urgency about anything. The other suffered right outside his door, in plain sight, every single day. And here is the quiet tragedy: the comfortable man had a daily, standing opportunity to respond, to notice, to change — and he let it pass, again and again, because he assumed the opportunity would always be there. Then, for both of them, time simply ran out. Here is what most people miss. After that moment, everything the first man had assumed about "later" was gone. He suddenly saw clearly what he had ignored for so long — but the window to act on it had closed completely. There was a separation described in this passage, a fixed and permanent divide, and the most sobering part of it is that it could not be crossed back over. What could have been changed with time was now beyond changing, not because God was cruel, but because the time for it was over. And then he thought of the people he had left behind who still had time. He begged for someone to go and warn them — to get a message to those still living, still able to change, before they made the same mistake he had. The answer he received about what those people already had access to, and why it would be enough, is one of the most important things Jesus ever said about how people respond to God. And it lands directly on YOU, because YOU are one of the ones who still has time. That is the mercy in this hard passage: YOU are still on the side of the divide where change is possible. The very fact that YOU can hear this today means the window is still open. But it was never meant to be treated as if it would stay open forever. What was the opportunity the first man kept ignoring? What did he beg for once it was too late? And what does his warning mean for YOU while YOU still have time?
