Reading 46
I will come again
The reading
John 14:1-7
“Don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many homes. If it weren’t so, I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and will receive you to myself; that where I am, you may be there also. Where I go, you know, and you know the way.”
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on, you know him, and have seen him.”
The companions
Psalm 27:13-14
I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD. Be strong, and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the LORD.
Daniel 7:13-14
I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. Dominion was given him, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which will not pass away, and his kingdom that which will not be destroyed.
The note
This is where the watch comes from. Not a mood, and not a reading of the news. A sentence: I will come again, and will receive you to myself.
It is said to frightened people the night before he dies. That is the setting. He tells them their hearts do not have to be troubled, then gives them the reason.
Thomas asks the practical question, and it is the right one. We don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?
The answer is not directions. I am the way. The route is a person. That is either an evasion or the most useful thing ever said to someone lost, depending entirely on whether he is who he says he is.
We keep watch because someone told us plainly that he is coming back.
This week
Say the promise in his own words once a day this week: I will come again. Out loud, at a fixed time — when the screen comes on, or before it goes dark. Not as a lift. As a fact you are checking that you still hold. Note the days you cannot say it honestly, and keep that list. It is worth more than a clean one. The watch is kept by people who know where their own doubt sits.
For the watch
Here is the promise the whole watch is built on, said in Jesus’s own words: I will come again. We do not keep watch out of vague hope or wishful thinking; we keep it because he told his friends, plainly, that he is coming back for us. That is why we watch the road at all. And he told us how to be ready in the meantime, not by mapping out the route or decoding the signs, but by staying close to him, who is himself the way. So we keep the watch as people who have been given a promise, awake and unafraid, because the one who said he would return is the same one who is the road home.
Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain). The divine name is rendered “the LORD” in the Psalm.
This page is made for paper too: print it and the reading prints clean, ready for the table.