ANTICIPATION

The Gospel passage (Luke 12:32-40) for this Sunday, 12th August, is a parable told by Jesus about the members of a household waiting for their master to return after a period away. There are two different types of waiting – either anticipation or resignation. Resignation is disempowering and depressing; anticipation is hopeful and open. Resignation is like the farmers waiting to find out whether the foot and mouth virus has spread; anticipation is the opposite of cynicism. Sometimes resignation can feel safer and we mask it under a veneer of wisdom or a habit of being busy. Anticipation can ask more of us: to become like Hamlet (Act 5 scene 2) recognising the hand of providence:

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends

Rough-hew them how we will

There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

If it be now, ‘tis not to come;

if it be not to come, it will be now;

if it be not now, yet it will come

the readiness is all.

August is a comma in the calendar of the year. If we are able to use this pause and enjoy the slower rhythm to the days then we can learn to live out the anticipation talked about in the Gospel passage.

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