BE PREPARED Luke 12,35-38

BE PREPARED

Luke 12:35–48

“Let your loins be girt and your lamps burning. Be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that, when he comes and knocks, they will open to him immediately. Happy are those servants whom the master will come and find awake. This is the truth that I tell you—he will gird himself; he will make them recline at table; and he will come and serve them. Happy are they if he finds them so, even if he comes in the second or third watch. Know this—that if the householder knew at what time the thief would come he would have been awake and he would not have allowed his home to be broken into. So you must show yourselves ready, for the Son of Man comes at an hour you do not expect.”

This passage has two senses. In its narrower sense it refers to the Second Coming of Jesus; in its wider sense it refers to the time of our own death. When God will call us to Himself, to a new life.

There is praise for the servant who is ready. The long flowing robes of the east were a hindrance to work; and when a man prepared to work he gathered up his robes under his girdle to leave himself free for activity. The eastern lamp was like a cotton wick floating in a sauce-boat of oil. Always the wick had to be kept trimmed and the lamp replenished or the light would go out.

No one can tell the day or the hour when eternity will invade time and the summons will come. How, then, would we like God to find us?

1/ we would like him to find us with our work completed. Life for so many of us is filled with loose ends. There are things undone and things half done; things put off and things not even attempted. Jesus himself said, “I have accomplished the work which you gave me to do” (John 17:4). We should never lightly leave undone a task we ought to have finished, before night falls.

2/ we would like God to find us at peace with our neighbor. It would be a haunting thing to pass from this world with unforgiveness in our hearts. We should never let the sun go down on our anger (Ephesians 4:26) for we do not know the day or the hour when God will call us.

3/ we should like God to find us at peace with himself. It will make all the difference at the last whether we feel that we are going out to a stranger or an enemy, or going to fall asleep in the arms of God.