Faithful, Sensible Servant

Scripture: Matthew 24:44-51 (Click link for scripture in Bible Gateway)

44 You also must be ready all the time, for the Son of Man will come when least expected. 45 “A faithful, sensible servant is one to whom the master can give the responsibility of managing his other household servants and feeding them. 46 If the master returns and finds that the servant has done a good job, there will be a reward. 47 I tell you the truth, the master will put that servant in charge of all he owns. 48 But what if the servant is evil and thinks, ‘My master won’t be back for a while,’ 49 and he begins beating the other servants, partying, and getting drunk? 50 The master will return unannounced and unexpected, 51 and he will cut the servant to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 24:44-51 NLT)

The way to be ready when Jesus returns is to be ready all the time! (Not rocket science, friends!) Jesus is calling us to be faithful, sensible servants who take our responsibility for our lives seriously. It’s interesting to me that the responsibility Jesus focuses on here is the responsibility of caring for other people. “The care and feeding of Jesus’ other servants!” As I mentioned yesterday, life tends to get very, very ordinary and it’s so easy to lose sight of the importance of our current tasks and the reality that this will all change very suddenly one of these days! Since we don’t have a precise “I’ll Be Back!” date on the calendar (The Day and the Hour), we must be faithful to Jesus’ calling and assignments all the time.

One of the challenges of our stewardship for Jesus is that our stewardship is very long-term and largely unsupervised. We’re responsible for ourselves, for fulfilling our responsibilities and tasks. We’re responsible for others, to care for and nurture our brothers and sisters (fellow servants), and we can so easily kind of “space out” as time ticks along and nothing much happens.

Our lives, our opportunities, our relationships—these are our stewardship assignments. And no matter how slowly the clock ticks or how busy we are with the day-to-day, one day will be the last day. It’s kind of a “same song, second verse” thing, friends. The command is “Get ready!” The state of mind and heart is “Be ready!” The challenge of character and maturity is “Stay ready!”

Prayer:

Father, May we get ready, be ready, and stay ready! Grant us the grace to take our stewardship of self, opportunity, and relationships seriously. Help us not to get lazy or distracted. May we faithful, sensible servants! For the Kingdom’s Sake!