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 all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. – Matthew 24:37-39

Friends, when we read this passage, we shouldn’t imagine the people of Noah’s time as inherently evil or reckless. They were just busy. They were consumed by what we all are: work deadlines, grocery runs, planning the next family wedding, or maybe just scrolling through their ancient equivalent of social media. They were simply doing life. But in the comfort and clutter of their daily routines, they lost the ability to see the bigger picture. Their peril wasn’t in their activity; it was in their absence of awareness. Noah was pounding nails into a massive ark for decades, a daily sermon to everyone who passed by, yet the people were so focused on the immediate, the comfortable, and the conventional that they literally failed to notice a world-changing event until it was too late.

Doesn’t that sound familiar? We, too, can be so overwhelmed by the urgent things. The bills, the schedule, the noise. More often than not, we neglect the truly important reality: the persistent call of God. The terrifying truth here is that a spirit of distraction is often more dangerous than a spirit of rebellion. The people of Noah’s day weren’t shaking their fists at God; they were just too distracted to look up. They operated under a false sense of security, believing that “tomorrow will be exactly like today.” And honestly, who hasn’t felt that pull? We know we should spend time in prayer, but the email notification is louder. We know we should serve our neighbors, but we’re too tired from hustling for our own. We slip into a spiritual autopilot, mistaking routine for genuine relationship. The world lulls us into a stupor where we assume we have unlimited time. This “absence of awareness” is simply a failure of vision, a failure to see the eternal reality that is breaking into our momentary lives, calling us to vigilance.

Beloved in the Lord, our message for today is not meant to inspire panic, but to instill purposeful alertness. It’s a loving, urgent call from Jesus, inviting us to break free from the paralyzing comfort of distraction. It asks us to look at Noah’s ark, not as a historical artifact, but as a metaphor for the readiness Christ calls us to build in our own lives today. Let’s ask ourselves: what am I carrying in my daily life that is drowning out the sound of God’s invitation? Let’s trade that false security for the joy of active watchfulness, remaining spiritually engaged, and living with a keen, loving awareness that our Redeemer is coming. Let us live in a way that says, “I see the Ark, I hear the call, and I am ready.”