Reading 36
Lamps lit, ready for the door
The reading
Luke 12:35-40
Let your waist be dressed and your lamps burning. Be like men watching for their lord, when he returns from the marriage feast; that, when he comes and knocks, they may immediately open to him. Blessed are those servants, whom the lord will find watching when he comes. Most certainly I tell you, that he will dress himself, and make them recline, and will come and serve them. They will be blessed if he comes in the second or third watch, and finds them so.
But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what hour the thief was coming, he would have watched, and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore be ready also, for the Son of Man is coming in an hour that you don’t expect him.
The companions
Psalm 119:105
Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path.
Zephaniah 1:12
It will happen at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are settled on their dregs, who say in their heart, “The LORD will not do good, neither will he do evil.”
The note
Ready usually means braced. Someone waiting to be caught out, unable to enjoy anything. Nobody can sustain that for long, and it is not what he describes.
The picture is servants waiting up for a man they are glad to see, dressed, lamps lit, so they can open the door the moment he knocks. Both kinds of waiting are awake. Only one of them is at peace.
Then the line that is easy to read straight past. He will dress himself and serve them. The one they stayed up for takes their place and waits on them. That is what is on the other side of the door.
The rest follows from the hour being unknown. You cannot post a guard for one particular night when you have no idea which night it is. So readiness is not a state of nerves. It is a way of living that needs no warning.
This week
Wait up for someone. Be the one who is awake when a person needs an answer at a bad hour: the friend at midnight, the message nobody else replied to, the colleague on the far side of a timezone. Once this week, take the thing you would normally leave until morning.
Then notice the difference between sitting up in dread and sitting up for someone. That difference is the whole of what he is describing.
For the watch
This is why our watching is not fearful. We are not scanning the horizon dreading a reckoning; we are waiting up for someone we are glad is coming. That matters especially now, when the new minds rising in the world tempt so many toward fear of what is ahead. We keep a different posture: lamp lit, door watched, and no dread in it, because we know how the master treats the servants he finds awake.
Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain). The divine name is rendered “the LORD” in the prophet reading.
This page is made for paper too: print it and the reading prints clean, ready for the table.