Matthew24:43

Translation

And know this, if the master of the house had known in which watch of the night the thief

comes, he would have kept watch and not allowed his house to be broken into.

Paraphrase

There are things that we cannot know the timing of, such as when a thief will break into our house. If we could know the timing, we would be able to prevent it.

Footnotes

1: “Thief”

We get our word “kleptomaniac” from this Greek word.

If You Knew When the Thief Would Come

When I was young, my parents were missionaries in Honduras for quite a few years and in Nicaragua for four years. One night our house in Nicaragua was broken into while we were sleeping in it. The burglars (we assumed it was more than one) had gone first to the bathroom and grabbed armfuls of towels. They rolled up the towels and put one on the floor by the door each time they opened a door, that way the door would not close on its own and make noise. In the morning we could see everywhere they had been by following the trail of towels. I saw that they had walked right by my bed. They took several things, but it was obvious that they had prepared to take even more things because they had left a pile of things by the door. Apparently, someone must have made noise; it is likely that my baby brother started to cry, so they got out quickly.

Dad suspected that they would be back to get more things. He knew that a good dog would have prevented the burglary, but he wanted time to train a dog properly. So he hired a night watchman and told him to hide in the shadows behind the house. Sure enough, a few nights later some men started climbing over our wall into the back yard. The night watchman fired his pistol at them, and they went back over the wall with great haste. Not long after that, we got a German Shepherd.

I share that story because we figured the burglars would soon be back to burgle again and finish their burgling. To us this meant that their arrival was expected. Most of the time the arrival of a robber is unpredictable. If the owner of the house knows when to expect the thief, he can usually stop him. The key word is “if.” In our case, my dad was quite sure that the robbers would be back soon, and he was right. Most homeowners do not have that luxury. Likewise, the coming of Jesus in power and glory to punish and reward will be unpredictable.