Mat 24:46 Blessed [is] that servant, whom his lord when he comes shall find so doing
Mat 24:47 Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.

Alternative: Fortunate is the servant whose arriving master shall discover him so prepared. Truly I tell you that he shall establish himself upon all his present advantages.

The message here is simple: we prove our worth by preparing for the worst and offering our support to others.

Recently, I was reading a ten part series on suffering from many different religious leaders. (One part is here, you can follow the links for the rest.) For all their long-winded philosophizing, most of these great minds seem to miss the point of human suffering entirely. Suffering has to exist for the world, for our lives, to have any meaning. For us to establish ourselves, as Christ says here, we must deal with the problem of suffering by offering our support to others (previous verse).

There are only two kinds of suffering: suffering caused by human misdeeds and suffering caused by nature.

Human caused suffering exists as a condition of human freedom. If human misdeeds did not cause suffering, none of our decisions would have any meaning. A "good" choice would be no different from a "bad" choice. In a sense, we would have not choices at all because every decision would have the same happy ending. Human caused suffering is necessary so our decisions have meaning. Eliminate human-caused suffering and our freedom is a sham. Our decisions would have no consequences.

This brings us to natural suffering: why does God allow death, disease, and disaster, the topics of this chapter? Because without natural suffering, we would 1) have no need for each other, and 2) have no need to learn about the universe, that is, the way God makes things work. We are born as children so we need our parents. We grow old so we need our children. We grow sick, suffer from starvation, and all the rest so we are forced to learn and grow. If we lived in Eden, where we had no needs, we would be stagnant. Natural suffering is our impetus to grow and develop and to think about God. If our every need was satisfied, our lives would have no purpose, i.e. telos, "end," the focus of this chapter.

Only because we are challenged by suffering do we have the potential of establishing ourself in the eyes of God. Only because of the potential of suffering, do we prepare ourselves with faith and confidence in the meaning of life. God gives us the desire for nirvana and then says, "Okay, now work for it! You won't ever get there, but you will do wonderful, wonderful things! You will sacrifice for one another and discover love and have make discoveries that will fill you with wonder! You will lose the ones you love, but in the process you will learn to feel. You will learn to care. Your choices will matter! Your life will have meaning. Reread the beatitudes with this in mind and you will see the connection between them and the idea expressed here.

"Blessed" is from makarios, which means "blessed," "happy," and "fortunate."

"Find" is from heuriskô (heurisko), which means "to find," "to find out," "to discover," "to devise," "to invent," "to get," and "to gain."

"Doing" is from poieô (poieo), which means "to make," "to produce," "to create," "to bring into existence," "to bring about," "to cause," "to render," "to consider," "to prepare," "to make ready," and "to do."

"Make him ruler" is from kathistêmi (kathistemi) which means "to set down," "to bring down," "to bring into a certain state," "to make," "to be established," "to be instituted," and "to stand against."

"Goods" is from huparchonta, which is the past partiple noun form of huparchô, which means "to take the intiative," "to begin." In this form, it means, "that which is in existence," and "the past record." In this form, it means "existing circumstances," "present advantages," "possessions," "resources," and "future resources."