2023-11-24 A Meditation on the Hastening Hour
“35 “Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, 36 and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. 37 Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. 38 If he comes in the second watch, or in the third, and finds them awake, blessed are those servants! 39 But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into. 40 You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”” (Lk 12:35–40 ESV)
The hastening hour says something to Man’s designs; an end to empty platitudes, to the claim that we’ll get around to it eventually, to postponing the gracious exchange, Man’s soliloquy of dependence in the face of Man’s proud gait. Man is dependent, and ends the empty platitude by rising, revved up, amped and encouraged, to the solemn submission. To the solemn submission Today, not put in a satchel like a miser waiting for a future date. No, Man’s channels in life, Man’s, Woman’s pathways, are writ in the King’s ledger, and time may come when it is too late to repent.
Too late to invite into the night watch of the soul, the King’s lordship. Too late to parry boredom, ennui, or outright crippling fear, with a steady hand, a guiding light, a heightened alert not ashamed, not elusive nor damning the soul with its own designs. Our faith has no design on our person, except to allow the soldier to coexist with the plebeian minus war-mongering, in times of peace, albeit heightened peace, alert peace, because our peace is earned, it is meant to mock our readiness, it is meant to lie and say all is copacetic, today like any day, copacetic neighbors and capitalistic exchanges, copacetic philosophers of curiously divergent themes.
The night watch then is the span of life in a few precious hours. It is the shadow that affrights, or the loon that sings startling songs into the blackness. It is the Call unto responsible carriage, carrying unperturbed the hopes and sanities, the cautions and the wisdom of our Sage the King. Our King is a right proper Lord of the Most High. He has given us drill sergeants and masters in arms. He has given us solo time both to alertness and to self-reflection. We reflect, on yet another peaceful hour that this peace was the dream of those who went before us solemnly into the battle.
The hastening hour is our occasion to rid the mind of its calculated plans of approach. We end the calculated postponement of contrition, because why not? Why not today? Why not label ourselves with the solemn tagline of “Christian”, of “Religionist”, of “Adherent” this day and this hour? Who knows but that in the milieu to follow, there will be no water stirred up, no time to receive even those things freely given unto us? Who knows but that we only supercharge our own future pain, by heightening the rebellious phase. Yet who knows also but that all will one day be forgiven, because of a Paul-like conversion; knowing he like all those who come to the Gospel gates, bore a cross commensurate with his folly. A cross gladsome and cause to rejoice, yet somehow proof of a timely announcement: God is with me! I am no longer groping in the night. I am healed with the welcome news of Christ for me, and me of all lousy sinners, healed and stumbling into a vocal ministry of Joy.