I actually like watching commercials—the creativity, the little stories. But the ones that get me every time are the prescription drug ads, where they spend the first fifteen seconds selling you the miracle and the last fifteen rattling off side effects that sound worse than whatever you started with. Dizziness. Seizures. And somewhere in that list, said in the same cheerful voice: death. Meanwhile the actor’s smiling, looking forward to what’s ahead.
Three days out from the cross, on the Mount of Olives, Jesus tells a story with a warning buried in it just like that. Ten bridesmaids, ten torches, one wedding—and half of them miss it. For years I read this as “don’t be lazy, don’t fall asleep.” But that’s not it. This one isn’t about your appearance or your effort. It’s about what you’re carrying on the inside that nobody else can see.
You can warm yourself by someone else’s fire—until they get up and leave.
Ten Bridesmaids, One Job
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.” (Matthew 25:1–4, ESV)
Jesus picks ten on purpose—in Hebrew thinking, ten is the number of completeness. Ten plagues, ten commandments. He’s telling the whole crowd, “This is about all of you,” and then splitting them right down the middle. Five wise, five foolish. And the words matter: “foolish” here isn’t unintelligent. It means dull, surface-level, not paying attention—the receptors are off. These weren’t dim women. They just breezed past the one thing that mattered.
Their job was simple. Every single day, be ready, because nobody knew the hour the bridegroom would come. The wise hauled heavy clay flasks of extra oil everywhere they went. The foolish grabbed a torch and figured that was good enough. It’s the difference between the family at the beach with three sad logs and a glowing ember, and the guy who backed his truck up with six pallets and lit a fire bigger than the people around it.
No Shortcut at Midnight
“But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ … And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘There will not be enough for us and for you.'” (Matthew 25:6–9, ESV)
When the shout comes at midnight, the foolish are scrambling. “Give us your oil.” And the wise say no—not to be cruel, but because the oil is non-transferable. If they share, everyone runs dry and the whole procession goes dark. So the five head off to buy oil at midnight, which is exactly the wrong time to be shopping for the one thing you were supposed to already have.
We live in a culture obsessed with the shortcut. Lose thirty pounds without diet or exercise. Erase twenty years of wrinkles in five minutes. Fix your credit overnight. We do it spiritually too—we can’t sleep, we’re anxious, so we pull up a three-hour podcast at 2 a.m. and doom-scroll for the easy answer, chasing the worship influencer instead of tending our own fire. But the oil in this story is the Holy Spirit, and you can’t buy that at 7-Eleven at midnight.
“I Do Not Know You”
“And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. … But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.'” (Matthew 25:10–12, ESV)
That word “shut” is heavy—sealed, authoritative. It’s the same word used when God shut the door of Noah’s ark. Noah didn’t close it; God did, and no one was kicking it back open. And “I do not know you” here doesn’t mean “we never had a relationship.” It’s closer to “I don’t recognize you anymore—you were on the guest list, but you turned up carrying something different than the rest.”
Here’s the weight of it: Jesus is talking to the church. To people who showed up, who looked the part, who were counted among the bridesmaids. The difference wasn’t the invitation. It was the oil.
The Bigger Story
The moment you surrender to Jesus, you get all the Holy Spirit you’ll ever need—not a starter portion you have to beg to refill. But you have to stir it up. You can’t live on someone else’s faith, can’t unplug your dead phone and charge it off the person next to you, can’t sit beside a “chocolaty” Christian on Sunday and hope their fire warms you through the week. The warmth of someone else’s fire feels real right up until they stand up and walk away.
So you tend your own. Every morning, even when it feels like you’re talking to no one, you show up: “Here I am, God. What do you have for me?” Miss a morning and you’re not disqualified—this isn’t earning anything. It’s just staying close, keeping the flame fanned, so that when the shout comes you’re not scrambling for something you were meant to be carrying all along.
Share This With Someone This Week
Someone you know is running on someone else’s fire—living off a spouse’s faith, a favorite podcast, the highlight reel of people they follow online. This story is for them, and it’s not a scolding; it’s an invitation to have their own. Send it to the friend who keeps meaning to start and never quite does. Handing someone the truth gently is one of the most loving things you can do.
What Are You Going to Do About It?
Read Matthew 25:1–13 slowly, then sit in silence for five honest minutes and ask: am I tending my own fire, or borrowing heat from someone else’s? Where have I been chasing a shortcut instead of showing up daily? Then pick one small thing—one morning this week—to sit with God before you reach for anything else, and start there. Don’t try to fix everything. Just one adjustment that gives the Spirit more room.