Day 169: Luke 12:35–40

You must be like people waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet so that when he comes and knocks, they can open the door for him at once (v. 36).

Jesus told the disciples a set of interlaced parables in Luke 12 about being ready for His return. We’ll look at the first one today. The point of each dealt with watchfulness and doing what Christ assigns us to do. Christ wants His people to be ready and waiting. No matter whether you’re a pretribulationalist, a post-tribulationalist, an amillennialist, a dispensationalist, or have no clue what any of these terms even mean, Christ is coming back. Every eye will see Him.

Some things about God’s ways make me grin . . . like the way He knows our tendency to play amateur prophet. He puts all of us in our date-setting places by basically saying, “The only thing I’ll tell you about My next visit is that you won’t be expecting Me.” The urgency is to be ready at all times. “Keep your lamps burning” (Luke 12:35).

Our version of keeping our lamps burning is leaving a light on at night for someone out late. One of the shocks of the empty nest is no longer having someone to “wait up for.” Those of us who have older children have experienced the late-night difficulty of falling into a deep sleep before they get home. We can doze perhaps, but we don’t fully sleep until they’re safe inside. Even though waiting up is exhausting, it’s a reminder of close family relationships and responsibility. At this particular season in my life, my heart is encouraged to know that we still have Someone for whom to “leave the light on.”

Several years ago a precious friend of mine lost her only son, a young adult. Five years later she lost her husband. I have ached for her aloneness. But I am so grateful that those of us in Christ always have Someone for whom we can wait expectantly at all times. Christ calls on us to be watching for Him when He returns—not inactively, mind you, but as servants (v. 37). Luke 12:38 tells us, “It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night.”

Christ’s desire is that we live in such close involvement with Him that all we lack is seeing Him face-to-face. Oh, that God would create in each of us such an acute awareness and belief of His presence that we won’t be caught off guard! That our faith will simply be made sight! That we’ll be gloriously shocked but unashamed!