Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. 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. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

• Luke 12:37-40

But they soon forgot what he had done and did not wait for his plan to unfold.

• Psalm 106:13

I wait for your salvation, Lord, and I follow your commands.

• Psalm 119:166

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
    and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
    more than watchmen wait for the morning,
    more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
    for with the Lord is unfailing love
    and with him is full redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel
    from all their sins.

• Psalm 130:5-8

“ ‘Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes’ (Luke 12:37). We live in an age of worldviews. It’s already a question of worldview as to how one dresses, how one eats, how one exercises. And seldom have people been so bound, so doctrinaire, so intolerant about their worldviews as today. Now one can naturally smile about all these phenomena and withdraw with an air of superiority. And yet such smiling is not good. It shows that one has not understood what is at stake in these things that seem so curious. And there is doubtless a single great theme around which all our worldview thinking moves. And that is the future of humankind…. Whether one thinks of human beings as political beings, as ethical beings, as intellectual beings, as religious beings, as fighting beings, or as peacemakers, there is basically only one great concern, about the human beings of the future….
“And now it seems as if the Bible, in this effort to create a new kind of human being, also wants to say something, as if it is proposing its own ideal of the human being who is supposed to meet the future. It is not speaking about the political, not about the ethical, not even about the religious human being, but rather about the human being who is watching and waiting, the waiting human being.”

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I Want to Live These Days with You (devotion for October 10, devotions compiled from his writings)

I think of the old Gospel song Jesus is coming soon, morning or night or noon. Many will meet their doom, trumpets will sound. All of the dead shall rise, righteous meet in the skies, going where no one dies, heavenward bound. (Robert E. Winsett)

Have you ever been in Sunday school class and the topic of the first century Christians thinking that Jesus was coming in their lifetime, and then someone scoffs that those idiots were off by two thousand years?  Well, they should heed their own words.  If the first century Christians were off by 2,000 years, Jesus could return any day now.

Have you ever stood in a line and you really had no idea why you were there?  The old joke goes that there are two lines that form as you enter Heaven.  One line is for hen-pecked husbands.  The other line is for husbands that were not hen-pecked.  One day, St. Peter saw the line going beyond his field of vision for the hen-pecked husband line, but there was only one man in the other line.  St. Peter went over and asked the man why he was in that line, and the man replied, “My wife told me to stand over here.”

Sometimes we have good reason to stand in one line or another.  Sometimes, the excuse is rather lame, like everyone else did it.  Have you ever pulled into the slower, longer traffic line, guessing that in another mile or two the lane you were in would be closed?  Most of the time, you might be right, but maybe those people pulled into that lane to park and get some rest.  But to have your foot pushing on the break for over an hour is not restful.

But the traffic jam is a good example.  You could, and I have, put the car in park, to rest your leg that has been pressing the break pedal.  But what does that say about your immediate anticipation.  You are not thinking that the line will move soon.  You are counting on the line not moving for a while.  I have even turned off the engine.  Now that really is a failure of anticipation of anything imminent.

But a foot on the break, trying to see several vehicles in front – good luck when a truck is in front of you and you are not in a curve, you are anticipating an imminent change in the conditions.

My wife and I were returning from Baltimore, MD.  I had a project that I had been working on, and we had just gotten on the Pennsylvania Turnpike when we came to a complete stop.  For a while, I pressed the break pedal.  Then, I noticed a trucker in front who was out of his truck, kicking the ice and snow off his tires.  I put the car in park, and I got out to talk to him.  He said that a wibble-wobble got squirrelly and jumped the Jersey barriers.  Five trucks wrecked.  No traffic could move in either direction.  We were going to be there a while, so everyone needed to conserve fuel.

Note: A Wibble-wobble is slang for what the Canadians call a B-Train, a truck pulling multiple trailers.  I like the phrase “wibble-wobble” because that indicates the concept of getting “squirrelly.”  You go into a curve a little too fast or there is a gust of wind and the back trailer obtains a mind of its own and wobbles into the next lane.  That is exactly what happened in this case, and with the concrete barrier between lanes traveling in opposite direction being about four feet high, the back trailer had to be wobbling a lot and the driver’s speed had to be quite high, probably much faster than the speed limit.

We were parked for several hours.  We turned on the car once each hour for about fifteen minutes.  This thawed the ice that formed on the windshield, and we got a little warmth for our bodies.  People were walking into the woods to go to the bathroom, but my wife refused.  She held it in and luckily, the Somerset Service Plaza was about 15 miles down the road, once the traffic was flowing.  But I was watching the trucker in front of me.  When he hurriedly went to his cab and cranked up his truck, I cranked up our car and had the car in gear, ready to go.

I am reminded of these cults whose leader would say for everyone in his “flock” to meet in a cornfield because Jesus was coming, or the alien spacecraft, whatever.  After they waited a few hours, some might start thinking that their leader had a few screws loose in his head.

But God’s timing is not our timing.  God is outside time and space.  To Him, coming soon could be 2,000 years from now.  It has nearly been 2,000 years since those words were used, but the words are important in that we do not know the time and we need to anticipate Christ’s return.

Even if Jesus does not come in our lifetime, we have a set number of days.  Do we waste them playing video games, or watching old television reruns?  Or do we anticipate the return of Jesus by praying, studying the Bible, and telling others the Good News?  We are not guaranteed another day.  Let us make the most of this day.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.