Ready or not
- Gary Fritsch
- Aug 28
- 2 min read
I think almost everyone has had the experience of playing hide and seek as a kid, or maybe even as a parent or grandparent. After counting out the numbers while everyone finds their place, the seeker shouts gleefully: "Ready or not, here I come!"
Not long ago, I was playing with my grandchildren, and having found a particularly excellent hiding place, was a little dismayed when my grandson just quit searching and went on to something else. After a while I had to quit my hiding place - convinced that he would never come to find me. This experience is not unique to me and not unique to hide and seek.
Throughout history, in many different circumstances, humans have had to ready themselves and then wait. In the military, we called it 'hurry up and wait'. In the life of faith, we can often go through periods of heightened spiritual awareness and urgency and find ourselves in a 'good place' with the Lord. The hard thing is to stay in that good place.
In the early lives of Christians, they were convinced that Jesus was coming 'right back'. So, they remained vigilant, consistent with the instruction that He had given in today's Gospel and elsewhere. in the letter to the Thessalonians that we get today, St. Paul talks about days and hours in regard to the Lord's return. Later in St. Paul's writing, he begins to instruct his followers to have a longer horizon of expectation (since it had been more than 30 years and Jesus had not returned yet). When we think something is about to happen immediately, we might be tempted to just stay in place, especially if we are in a particularly good place.
Another clear reality is this: we can only 'hold in place' for so long. Life intervenes and requires us to be in motion. A strategy of remaining static in a good place is not going to work. We must determine how we can remain ready and in motion. To do this, our motion has to be a motion of love. We have to be actively involved in loving - which Jesus reinforces in the next chapter of Matthew's Gospel where He tells us that those who feed the hungry, visit the sick, and shelter the homeless will be welcomed to share in their master's joy.
We are not on a quest to remain sinless and blameless (although we should pursue those things), but as Jesus shares in the parable of the talents, we are called to be busy about investing all of the good that God has given us. The person who just avoids sin is like the one who buries the treasure because they worry that their master is harsh. As we approach each day, perhaps we can consider that He might come today, and that we want Him to find us not hiding, but in the act of loving.
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