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Faithful Servant

         “Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.  Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But if that evil slave says in his heart, ‘My master is not coming for a long time,’ and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eat and drink with drunkards; the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour which he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 24:45-51)

The purpose of today’s post is not “Oh my! Jesus is going to arrive at 6:19 pm. You’d better get your house in order!” Yes, Jesus could return at 6:19 pm, but I suspect that since I’ve given that date and time, 6:19 today is the one minute that He won’t arrive. The purpose today might be considered the opposite because my HU!NY![1] is acting up again. The question to be considered in light of this passage is “How do we live in the present with the future in mind without getting overwhelmed by it?”

The future in question does not have to be Christ’s return. It can be tomorrow, Christmas, or whenever X is finished. But what Jesus told us in this passage is that the key to being ready for His return is doing the day-to-day things like giving those for whom one is responsible their daily food and treating them as they should be treated. This is to be done because it’s the right thing to do, the thing that would please the master of the household (the Lord.) And it’s to be done as if the master of the household were walking through the door.

And that goes along with what I keep telling myself and others: “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have, now.” Will I learn this time? We’ll see.


[1] Hurry up! Not yet!

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