I got in the car yesterday and saw that I had less than a quarter of a tank of gas. Our practice is to keep the tank on the upper side of being full. We never know when we need to just jump in the car and go to arrive in the shortest time. At those times we don’t need to be stopping to pump gas, particularly at those stations that you have to really control the flow to keep it from clicking off. Boy, that’s a hassle. I liked it before all the safety stuff, or whatever it is, so you could just stick that nozzle in the hole and let ‘er bump until it was full. Sometimes seventy-four-year-old hands don’t like to have to squeeze that handle just right and hold it that way in order to slowly get a tank full of gas. But nothing was pressing yesterday, so in my good time I filled it up. Now it’s ready to go to Mexico if I want. That’s just an expression. The last time I was in Mexico was back in the nineties. But the point is that it is good to have your tank full and ready to go with no delays. That fill-up yesterday reminded me of the story Jesus told of the ten girls who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five were wise and five were foolish. They all had lamps. The foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them. The wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. When the bridegroom didn’t come right away as expected, all the girls got sleepy and crawled in bed. At midnight there was a cry made; like the phone was ringing off the wall! They were told, “The bridegroom is coming! Go out to meet him!” All the girls got up and trimmed their lamps (cleaned the wick of an oil burning lamp). The foolish asked the wise girls to give them some of the oil they had because theirs had gone out. The wise girls said, “Nope, we have what we need. There is not enough for us both. You go get your own oil.” (my paraphrase). Wouldn’t you know, while those girls went to get their needed oil, the bridegroom came, and those who had their tank full went right into the wedding and the door was shut. Nobody else was allowed in. So, afterward, those other girls got back from getting their oil and tried to get into the wedding, but their names were not on the guest list. They were not allowed into the wedding feast. The point Jesus made with this little story was that if we are just dragging our little religious self around and we are not truly committed to the Lord, and we are not full of the Spirit of God, we are in danger of missing it. We can forget our little theology. We gotta check our heart. Matthew 25