Dressed and Ready

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE

DRESSED AND READY

Luke 12:35-40

35 "Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, 36 like men 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. 37 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. 38 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night. 39 But understand 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, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him." 

NIV

Although this is somewhat of a parable, it is not. Jesus is simply giving an illustration of how we are supposed to live, or perhaps it would be more of what kind of mindset we need to live with. If we are always to be dressed and ready for service and keep our lamps burning, then we cannot afford to get distracted by all the ways of the world. Now, we cannot just sit around and wait for Jesus to return either. We are still supposed to be dressed for service, which means there are works of service that we have been called to do. Of course, the most used verse in the bible comes from James telling us that our faith without works is a dead faith, meaningless. Faith must produce some kind of activity, however, Jesus is saying here that it does not matter what we are doing, what kind of activity we are engaged in, whether that be in Christian service, or in our worldly occupation, we need to always be ready to leave everything behind, knowing in our heart and mind, that Jesus is coming back for us and that we are watching for him, anxiously anticipating with excitement his return, and expecting that to happen any moment. We cannot get into the mindset that he will come someday in the future, and we will have some time to get dressed and ready to open the door. If we get so involved, or engaged in our daily lives, working, being concerned about the things Jesus has already told us about, what we will eat, and wear, the stuff we need and want, and get too distracted, even about doing religious things, serving in the church, doing what we think are good deeds or whatever, we might not be as ready as we think we are. Everything in this present world is temporary, it is all going to be burned up, and become a wasteland, and all our efforts will be useless, but when Jesus comes back, everything will be made perfect, and we need to be ready at all times for him at an hour we do not expect him. We cannot plan on when he will return so that we have time to do whatever we think we should be doing, and get it done right, so to please him. We do not know how much time we have before he comes for us. It could be before I finish this writing and get it posted on the blog. It could be sometime today, while we are at work, or tonight as we lay our heads down. We simply do not know when, but we always need to be dressed in our faith, our lamps burning, ready to see our Lord at any moment. Let’s make sure we are dressed and ready.