Yesterday’s Gospel reading from the Daily Office started with one of my favorite “kingdom” verses and then moved into O’Donovan/wake-up territory.  The “kingdom” verse and following from Luke 12:

³² “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. ³³ Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. ³⁴ For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

I love the image of the Father’s gift of the kingdom . . . that it’s His “good pleasure,” too.  The bundle of the two verses following add to the significance of pursuing an “kingdom” life, too.

And then the O’Donovan part:

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.”

Be ready.  Be found awake when the master returns.  Be dressed for action.

This weekend I was rereading Stanley Hauerwas’s essay on “How I Think I Learned to Think Theologically,” which I read a couple of years ago but hadn’t revisited since.  I was surprised to see O’Donovan’s thoughts from Self, World, and Time show up throughout the essay.  It was good and encouraging to see the weaving.