Readiness – Luke 12:32-40

A text – Luke 12:32-40

³² “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. ³³ Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. ³⁴ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

³⁵ “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; ³⁶ be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. ³⁷ Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. ³⁸ If he comes during the middle of the night or near dawn and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.

³⁹ “But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁰ You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

A reflection:

Readiness.

My pastor, The Rev. Dr. Erick J. Thompson, has written that this passage is filled with potential energy just waiting to be turned into kinetic energy. Human beings are waiting to turn readiness into springing-into-action, so that they can greet the Lord and do whatever he requests. To be in readiness, to wait for something filled with that potential energy, one needs to set aside fear and have confidence in a plan.

Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” You have everything you need. You are enough just as you are.  Sell your possessions, make the poor people’s life a little better, because you already have eternal life close enough to grasp when the moment comes. Greeting God with all your hope and energy will bless you beyond measure. You don’t know when the kingdom will break through, so wait in readiness.

For many of us, living in a state of readiness for God’s arrival isn’t on our minds very much. We are cluttered with a great many other things, things we are worried about, things we are happy about, things we are preparing for, things we are cleaning up from. How do we sustain a state of readiness for the Kingdom of God’s coming? We want to know if it will be imminent or delayed. We want to know at what hour we must have our lamps trimmed.

But we will not know. Not even Jesus knows, he tells us. This is one more plea on Jesus’s part for us to be in a daily relationship with the Father through prayer, so that it will be just natural for us when we get the news. How do we do that? We will be ready if we are in daily prayer, if we contemplate God often, if we take the time to dwell in the Word alone and with others. Having an ongoing relationship is probably the key to readiness. How are we doing with that? I could do better, and this lesson is a reminder.

A prayer:

Lord God, thank you for loving us. Thank you for giving us a relationship with you. Thank you for sending Jesus to teach us to pray and to reveal your loving nature to us in so many ways. Help us to daily remember you and your goodness so that being ready for you becomes second nature to us. Amen.