Found So Doing: When Being Ready Looks Like Dinner on the Table

Most households know the sound. A car pulls up outside unannounced, someone at the window says “It’s Auntie!”, and the house bursts into motion. Shoes get kicked under the settee. A pile of school uniforms disappears into a bedroom and the door is shut on it. Someone runs a cloth over the dining table, and someone else puts the kettle on to look relaxed. By the time the gate opens, everybody is sitting down, a little out of breath, as though the place always looks like this.

It is funny, and it is also a picture of how many of us think about being ready for God. We imagine readiness as a scramble: a burst of effort, a quick tidy of the soul, getting the room presentable before the visitor comes in.

An hour you do not expect

Jesus was plain about the timing of his return: “Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Matthew 24:44). If we cannot know the hour, the scramble is no use. You cannot tidy up in time for a visit you did not see coming. The only kind of readiness that works is the kind that is already there.

What surprises me is how Jesus goes on to describe that readiness. He does not talk about a spotless house or a dramatic spiritual moment. He talks about a servant with ordinary household duties:

“Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing.” (Matthew 24:45-46)

Food in due season. Meals served on time to the people you are responsible for. The servant in the story is blessed not for something extraordinary he did when he heard the master’s car at the gate, but for what he was already doing. He was found “so doing”, in the middle of his normal work.

The household in your charge

Each of us has been put in charge of some kind of household. For some it is literal: children to feed, an elderly parent to bathe, a mortgage to keep paid, a roof to keep patched. For others it is a rented room, a small shop, a class of children, the upkeep of a family house nobody else wants to deal with. Readiness, in Jesus’ telling, looks like looking after those things faithfully and at the proper time.

That is good news for people whose lives feel too ordinary to count. The mother up at five to pack lunches is not too busy to be ready; she may be the very picture of it. The man checking the water tank before the dry season, or putting a bit aside every month so the land tax is paid on time, is doing “food in due season” work. God is not waiting for us to get past the household to something more spiritual. He meets us in it.

The servant who says “later”

Jesus also describes the other servant, the one who says in his heart, “My master is delaying his coming” (Matthew 24:48), and starts mistreating the people under him and living carelessly. The trouble is not that he misread the calendar. He took the delay as permission.

We know that voice at home. The apology can wait until he stops sulking. The repair can wait until after Christmas. The conversation about the will can wait until someone is sick. Prayer with the children can wait until they are old enough to sit still. None of these are wicked on their own. But a household run on “later” slowly turns into one where the people in it are not being fed, in every sense of the word.

Readiness without panic

None of this is meant to make us anxious. Jesus’ words are a warning, but they are also a relief. We do not have to live on constant alert, jumping at every sound of tyres on the gravel. We only have to keep doing, faithfully and without fuss, the good work in front of us, trusting that the Master sees it and is glad.

So the question at the end of an ordinary day is not “Would the house pass an inspection tonight?” It is closer to this: Did the people in my care get what they needed today? Were they fed, heard, forgiven, prayed for? Was the small duty done that I have been putting off?

For reflection

• Who is in the “household” God has put in your charge in this season, and what does “food in due season” look like for them?
• Which task, conversation or repair have you been putting off with “later”?

A prayer: Lord Jesus, you told us to be ready, and you showed us that readiness looks like faithfulness in small things. Keep me from the rush to look good, and from the laziness of “later”. Help me to care well for the people and the home you have placed in my hands, so that whenever you come, you may find me so doing. Amen.

Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com