 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
|
Keep Your Lamps Burning Today’s Treasure: Be dressed and ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet” (Luke 12:35-36). Jesus told the disciples a set of interlaced parables about being ready for His return. The point of each dealt with watchfulness and doing what Christ assigns us to do. Christ wants His people to be ready and waiting. No matter whether you’re a pretribulationalist, a post-tribulationalist, an amillenialist, a dispensationalist, or have no clue what any of those mean, Christ is coming back. Every eye will see Him. Some things about God’s ways make me grin…like the way He knows our tendency to play amateur prophet. He puts all of us in our date-setting places by basically saying, “The only thing I’ll tell you about My next visit is that you won’t be expecting Me.” The urgency is to be ready at all times. Christ told us to “keep your lamps burning” (Luke 12:35). Our version of keeping our lamps burning is leaving a light on at night for someone out late. One of the shocks of having an empty nest is no longer having someone to “wait up for” at night. Those of us who have older children have experienced the late-night difficulty of falling into a deep sleep before they get home. We can doze perhaps, but we don’t fully sleep until they’re safe inside. Even though waiting up is exhausting, it’s a reminder of close family relationships and responsibility. At this particular season in my life, my heart is encouraged to know that we have Someone for whom to “leave the light on.” Five years ago a precious friend of mine lost her only son, a young adult. Last week she lost her husband. I have ached for her aloneness. I am so grateful that those of us in Christ always have Someone for whom we can wait expectantly at all times. Christ calls on us to be watching for Him when He returns, not inactively, mind you, but as servants (v. 35). Luke 12:37 tells us, “It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes.” Christ’s desire is that we live in such close involvement with Him that all we lack is seeing Him face-to-face. Oh, that God would create in each of us such an acute awareness and belief of His presence that we won’t be caught off guard! That our faith will simply be made sight! That we’ll be gloriously shocked but unashamed! God, create in us a longing for Your appearing so our lamps will be ever burning. I can’t imagine what Christ meant when He said that those He finds ready and waiting will recline at a table and He will wait on them (v. 37). My mind can’t fathom such a thing. Lord Jesus, how I long for Your return! My heart rejoices at the thought of finally seeing You face-to-face. Please grant me the grace to keep my lamp burning and not be found unprepared when You return. In Your holy name I pray, Amen. Adapted from Jesus the One and Only, by Beth Moore, pages 217-218. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2002. Used by permission.
|