By Pastor Mike Neifert
Pratt Friends Church
Special to the Tribune
Did you live near your grandparents when growing up? I did not live near mine except for a year or maybe two when I was in second or third grade. The rest of my childhood was spent hundreds of miles from them. This made visits from grandpa and grandma a big deal. I remember more than once kneeling with my siblings on our living room couch, watching out the window for their car to pull up to the curb.
When they rolled to a stop out front, we all screamed, “They’re here!” We were in the yard sprinting toward their car before they opened their doors. We could hardly wait to say hello and get hugged and carry suitcases and show them our toys and eat with them and crank homemade ice cream.
It’s funny. Looking back, my memories of the anticipation of my grandparents’ arrival at our house is far more vivid than those of their actual time with us. I don’t remember details at all about the day-to-day stuff of those weeks, but I can clearly picture myself and my brothers and sister, noses to the window watching for one car to make the turn onto our street.
I don’t know if you who lived a block or two from your parents’ parents can grasp how excited we’d get. Arrival day was like Christmas morning and our birthdays and the last day of school all rolled into one. It was bursting with energy greater than the sun’s. (I suppose that’s an exaggeration, but only a slight one. We were pretty excited.)
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” I think it’s true – at least to some extent, don’t you? At some point, however, if you and I aren’t careful, “Out of sight. Out of mind.” can kick in. Love can grow cold if we’re not watchful.
I mean, honestly, if grandpa and grandma were late by an hour or two, they might have arrived at a time when we weren’t alert to their coming and only been mobbed when the doorbell rang. If they were days late, we might have forgotten all together they were coming. It’s possible…I suppose.
Watchfulness and forgetfulness. You’ve probably experienced both in regards to the hope of Jesus’ return. You know, if you’ve been around the Bible or the church for more than a few years, that Jesus said he’d be back, but you’re busy with life and…
When was the last time you looked at the sky in the east and thought, “Today could be the day?”
I’m guessing it might have been a day or two or three since you consciously considered Christ’s coming. I don’t think about it all the time.
A few months back, on May 21, thoughts of the end were triggered unexpectedly when I clicked my way over to one of my favorite websites, nationaltoday.com. I discovered May 21 is mockingly celebrated annually as The End of the World. Why May 21? Because in 2011, a doomsday preacher’s prediction of the culmination of history was proven false on this day. May 21, 2011, came and went with no trumpet call, no savior riding on the clouds, no rapture despite this man’s predictions.
In the second half of Luke 12, from verse 35 on, Jesus speaks mostly of waiting and watching for his return. He starts with a parable about servants awaiting the return of their master who’s gone to a wedding banquet. They know he’ll be back, but they don’t know when, so they watch.
“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door
for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak.” (Luke 12:35-38)
On a scale of 1 to 10, if you’re using this parable as a gauge for the importance of watchfulness concerning the return of Jesus, what’s your score? Watchfulness is up there, isn’t it? 8, 9, 10?
So, how watchful are you?
To answer this question, don’t you need to know what watchfulness looks like? Does this parable answer the “what it looks like” question?
Maybe. Kind of. Sort of.
The only real clue we have is in the initial half sentence. Look at the first five words of verse 35.
“Be dressed ready for service…” (Luke 12:35a)
Being watchful, it seems, means doing what God gives us to do as we wait for his return? It means working while waiting and watching. If we’re obeying God’s direction, both what he says in the Bible and what he says by his Spirit, we are living as our master wants. We’re ready for his return no matter when it is.
The wisely watching man has his heart set on what the master wants. He works diligently out of love for God. There is no fear for the wisely waiting woman who daily submits to God’s rule and serves others with kindness. When Jesus returns, she’ll find reward awaits her.
What has God given you to do? Do it! Work while you wait and watch wide-eyed for your Lord’s return.
