This morning I have been studying Ephesians 6:10-24 as I prepare to teach it tonight at Midweek.  As I was working  through the passage, I was reminded of a story  in the book “Don’t Waste Your Life”,  concerning the Queen Mary during WWII, and I wanted to share it with you.

“The Queen Mary, lying in repose in the harbor at Long Beach, California, is a fascinating museum of the past.  Used both as a luxury liner in peacetime and a troop transport during the Second World War, its present status as a museum the length of three football fields affords a stunning contrast between the lifestyles appropriate in peace and war.  On one side of a partition you see the dining room reconstructed to depict the peacetime table setting that was appropriate to the wealthy patrons of high culture for whom a dazzlingly array of knives and forks and spoons held no mysteries.  On the other side of the partition the evidences of wartime austerities are in sharp contrast.  One metal tray with indentations replaces fifteen plates and saucers.  Bunks, not just double but eight tiers high, explain why the peace-time complement of 3000 gave way to 15,000 people on board in wartime.  How repugnant to the peacetime masters this transformation must have been! To do it took a national emergency, of course.  The survival of a nation depended on it.  The essences of the Great Commission today is that the survival of many millions of people depends on its fulfillment.”
 

As I read through Ephesians 6:10-24, I see that we must live with a similar “wartime” mentality.  

The Gospel is the hope of humanity and we are its ambassadors.