Alarming Alarms

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Was the house aflame, or was it just the battery alerting me to its own demise? The latter, thankfully, and it had courteously waited till 8am when I was already up and about.

In fact, it was not the smoke alarm, but the carbon monoxide alarm, which hardly made it better. I am always mildly irritated when the batteries go; it seems like an expense I can do with out (have you seen the price of batteries these days?). Yet it is a price worth paying, especially when alarms are concerned. The installation date I had bothered to complete when it went up: 20 June 2015, and a line above it said to replace every ten years. That time had certainly come, so I duly ordered a new one.

The beeping, the expense, the batteries: all the hassle, but all worth it. Having them is a burden; not having them a potential calamity. Joel writes in 2:1:

Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand.

The Bible is not a piece of soothing literature, a dry historical chronicle or an extravagant mythical fancy: it is an alarm sounding forth from paper leaves and leather bindings. A holy God comes to judge, and all those outside of Christ are liable to dreadful justice.

Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. Ps 2:12