Grab the breakfast, hold up the phone, catch the MRT, rush to the office, check your email on the computer, attend meetings, talk with customers and return home tired and exhausted. Our daily lives seem to go on and on and they are increasingly controlled or perhaps manipulated by demanding schedules. By and by we humans are becoming machines and on the other hand machines are replacing us in many ways. A person’s value is therefore defined by the things s/he has accomplished, the position s/he has held and even the contribution s/he has made to society. A person’s accomplishment and reputation have been greatly prized in human society.

But does God see the way we see it? In the letter to the Christians in Sardis, God saw what they had done and that they also had a great reputation for be alive, but in the eyes of God they actually were dead (Revelation 3:1). They, the children of God, were active and zealous working on many things, perhaps in the church and outside the church. They received much recognition because their work was so successful. However their work was not complete in God’s sight. “I find that your actions do not meet the requirements of my God” (v. 3). Their “work standard” is based on the world’s instead of God’s.

Thus God commanded them to wake up or he would come like a thief in the night, and their name would be blotted out of the Book of the Life. How could the Christians in Sardis be sleeping and need a wakeup call since they were busy and active in so many things? In the world they’re awake, but in the kingdom of God they’re asleep. Are we sleeping? Do we need a wakeup call?