Reading 34
The work left in your hands
The reading
Mark 13:32-37
But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Watch, keep alert, and pray; for you don't know when the time is.
It is like a man, traveling to another country, having left his house, and given authority to his servants, and to each one his work, and also commanded the doorkeeper to keep watch. Watch therefore, for you don't know when the lord of the house is coming, whether at evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning; lest coming suddenly he might find you sleeping. What I tell you, I tell all: Watch.
The companions
Psalm 130:5-6
I wait for the LORD. My soul waits. I hope in his word. My soul longs for the Lord more than watchmen long for the morning; more than watchmen for the morning.
Isaiah 21:11-12
One calls to me out of Seir, "Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?" The watchman said, "The morning comes, and also the night. If you will inquire, inquire. Come back again."
A word for the week
Here is the picture he leaves them with. A man goes away and hands his house over to his servants, each of them with a job, and the one at the door told to mind the door. That is all. No date, no schedule, no sign to look for. They wanted the date. Every generation has wanted it, and every seller of the future has been glad to name one for them. Jesus, who could have said, tells them instead that he does not know it, that not even the angels know it, that only the Father does.
Why would he do that? Because a date would ruin us. If you knew the year, you would live however you pleased until the year before it, and set an alarm. The not-knowing is not a gap in the plan. It is the plan. It hands the whole weight of your life back to today.
So look at what he does give them, because he gives them something. Work. Each servant has a task, named and put in his hands, and the doorkeeper has his door. That is the answer to the not-knowing. Not a mood, not a sky to scan. A job. The honest servant, the one who does it well when no one is looking, is doing the right thing whether or not the master is anywhere in his thoughts.
Then Jesus names the hours of a night one at a time, evening, midnight, the rooster, morning, and he does it because he knows which part is hard. Not the first hour. The fiftieth. Anyone can keep at a thing while they think the end of it is near. The whole difficulty is the long ordinary stretch when nothing happens, and nothing happens, and you start to wonder whether anything ever will. That stretch is where nearly all of a faithful life is spent. That is where it is kept or lost.
Which makes this the plainest instruction he ever gave, and one of the hardest to follow, because it asks nothing dramatic of you at all. Do the work in front of you. Feed the people at your table. Forgive the one you have been putting off. Keep the small daily practice lit on the nights it feels like nothing, and do the job well when nobody is checking. Your resolve will thin. He knew it would, and said so, and left you the house anyway.
The work was put in your hands. Keep it well, and keep it warm.
At the table
What is the work that was actually put in your hands, the task no one else can do for you? What part of it have you let slide, and what would picking it back up look like this week?
Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain). The divine name is rendered "the LORD" in the Psalm.
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