One night during college, while studying in my dorm room, I felt unsettled and restless. I grabbed the blanket off my bed and headed out to the middle of the dark soccer field.

My heart just wasn’t in the conversation I was hav­ing. My mind was wandering over the long to-do list in my head. My eyes kept sneaking glances at my watch to find out how late I was for my next meeting. My friend was talking, but I was not listening.

“So what do you do?” It was the question I dreaded to hear when meeting new people. I was a youth minister among a group of nonchurch friends and was afraid of the walls my profes­sion might raise between us. Did they assume that I was always judging them? Were they suspicious of me trying to convert them? Did they think they knew all about me without ever getting to know me?

“But why are they coming over for supper?” my four-year-old son asked. I explained that the family was new to town, and we wanted to make them feel welcome. “But why our house?” was his reply. A good question.

In this story that Jesus tells, all the slaves seem to be working independently. They each are given their number of tal­ents, and they each decide what to do with them. One of them operates only out of fearful duty to his master, and suffers the con­sequences.

What is the “day of the Lord”? Here Paul suggests that the day of the Lord is the future day when we are called home, the day we are called to stand before God in judgment. But it may also apply to any day that the Lord requires something important of us. We need to be ready.

When I was in Bible college, we loved to listen to old bluegrass gospel songs, like those sung by the Louvin Brothers. We would laugh at the contrast between the cheerful, lilting melodies and the frequently morbid lyrics about death and dying. “Who writes these words?” we’d ask ourselves.

Have you ever stopped to think about what is not in this letter? Paul does not complain about the food, the hardness of the beds (if there were beds), the temperature or darkness in the cell, the tightness of chains, or the lack of fresh air. If I were in jail, I think I would be talking a lot about those things.

Two weeks ago a family member was diagnosed with cancer. We have spent hours thinking and talking about what this means for all of us. We talk about death and dying, and we talk about life and living. Time moves at a glacial pace as we wait for doctor’s appointments and test results.

In Canada, today is Remembrance Day, when we recall the horrors of war and remember the soldiers and civilians who died. It’s a day when many Christians renew their commit­ment to peacemaking.