Luke 12:35-40

The Voice

^35-36 I’m not just talking theory. There is urgency in all this. If you’re apathetic and complacent, then you’ll miss the moment of opportunity. You should be wide awake and on your toes like servants who are waiting for their master to return from a big wedding reception. They’ll have their shoes on and their lamps lit so they can open the door for him as soon as he arrives home. ³⁷ How fortunate those servants will be when the master knocks and they open the door immediately! You know what the master will do? He’ll put on an apron, sit them down at the kitchen table, and he’ll serve them a midnight snack. ³⁸ The later he comes home—whether it’s at midnight or even later, just before dawn—the more fortunate the alert servants will be.

³⁹ In contrast, imagine a complacent, apathetic household manager whose house gets robbed. If he had been aware that thieves were waiting in the bushes and what hour they were coming, [he would have watched and]^[a] he never would have left the house! ⁴⁰ I’m trying to tell you that these are times for alertness, times requiring a sense of urgency and intensity, because like the master in the first story or the thief in the second, the Son of Man shows up by surprise.