We know what a wake up call is: a warning light on the car dash, a pain in your chest…anything that gets your attention & calls you to act immediately. That’s what today’s parable is about. A guy who cheated his boss is about to be fired. He cheats even more by befriending the boss’s debtors so they might take care of him when he’s fired. And his boss finds out & praises him for being so ingenious! The point is, take decisive action when you get a wake up call.
We can be very energetic, clever, & focused when it comes to our money or our health. But do we put the same energy and enthusiasm into our spiritual lives, our relationship with God? Jesus said that that must always come first, even before money, family & physical health. What good would it do to profit the whole world but lose your soul, your reason for living?
John Newton was an Englishman & a slave trader. He packed African men onto ships & took them to America to be sold. It was a long & terrible journey for them & many died. Once when doing so, Newton suddenly felt that he was losing his soul, even though he was making a lot of money selling these slaves. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, he turned the ship around & freed the African men. Then he wrote a song we all know: “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”