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Stay awake!
For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.
We must remain spiritually awake rather than hoping that we will identity some last minute signs and make ourselves ready then. Putting off our repentance is a bad plan, because tomorrow is not guaranteed, either to any of us individually, or indeed to the world as a whole.
if the master of the house
had known the hour of night when the thief was coming,
he would have stayed awake
and not let his house be broken into.
If we insist on sleep, on putting holiness off until another day, on indulging ourselves with drunkards, then we will experience the coming of the Lord as though he were a thief coming to take what is ours. This isn't something we usually formulate as our plan and then carry it out point by point. It is rather a gradual drowsiness that creeps upon us as we entertain the thought that, "My master is long delayed". This thought makes us gradually forget that we are but stewards, that what the master will eventually return to reclaim is rightly his own to begin with. We then begin to usurp the role of the master, but end up only as caricatures of him.
But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is long delayed,’
and begins to beat his fellow servants,
and eat and drink with drunkards,
So then, we want to avoid the entertaining the idea that our master is long delayed. But this is the way things look from a merely human perspective. In order to remain awake and alert we need supernatural help to remember that "he is actually not far from each one of us" (see Acts 17:27) and that he promised, "I am with you always, to the end of the age" (see Matthew 28:20). He comes to us in many ways each day, speaking to us through others, appearing to us in the guise of our neighbors and the poor, and ever offering, not to steal from us, but to pour out blessings upon us. This fact was what Paul called on the Corinthians to remember.
as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you,
so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift
as you wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
To the one who has more will be given, because the one who has is open to receive the Spirit from the Son more and more. To the one who has not even what he has will be taken away by the thief in the night, for it was never truly his to begin with, and he had invested in things that were passing away.
We might say that remaining awake is almost synonymous with remaining thankful, with an attitude and a posture of praise, like that demonstrated by the psalmist.
I will praise your name for ever, Lord.
Obviously half-hearted thanksgiving and praise will not do. We need more than words that can be spoken while we yet indulge in drunkenness and abuse of our fellow servants. Our praise must be genuine enough to drive away the lies about our master, ourselves, and our fellow servants. And this praise is itself a gift from our master, one to which we must be open, and to which we are free to neglect, or, hopefully, to respond.
Every day will I bless you,
and I will praise your name forever and ever.
Praise, empowered by the Spirit, can keep the lies of the enemy at bay. Thanksgiving can help keep us safe from the temptations to indulgence and presumption. May the Spirit himself teach us the sober intoxication that is the antidote to the drunkenness that holds the world in its sway.
And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ (see Ephesians 5:18-21)
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