When a family embarks on a cross-country vacation trip, do they just pack their gear, hop in the car and go? No! They probably take the car to the shop for a check up and oil change. And the last thing to do before hitting the road is usually to stop and fill up the tank with fuel.

Then, if it is you, you drive until you run out of gas, right? Again, No! . . . Well, some of us like to make a little game out of it and see just how many miles we can squeeze out of a tank, but generally we prefer to stop and fill up the tank before we run out of gas on the side of the road.

The Gospel today is about our life’s journey on the road to heaven. It is about the life of faith. It is about the heart of every man, woman, and child, which is faith. It is about that heart being ready for the coming of the Lord or not. It is about whether that heart of faith is full of the oil of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, or whether it is empty.

Yes, there are other applications of the parable that are just as valid and helpful and perfectly within the spirit of Jesus’ story.

The ten virgins are ten congregations in the Church militant working and waiting together for the day of the Church Triumphant to dawn.

The ten virgins are ten pastors tending to the needs of the bride until the bridegroom comes.

These are all aspects of the kingdom of heaven – all ways of looking at how the kingdom of heaven works on earth. But boiled down to the basics, the kingdom of heaven is a matter of the hearts of men, and whether each man’s heart of faith is filled with Christ or not.