Keeping Watch
You may listen to this devotion in audio form via podcast here.
Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn.
- Mark 13:35
Our family uses an app called “Life 360”. It allows us to keep track of the comings and goings of our high schoolers and is often used to locate the misplaced phone of one particular family member. Not long after we started using the app, my phone would tell me when I was nearing our house. Finally, I asked my boys what that was about. They had pinned our house as a location in the app and set up notifications letting them know when mom or dad were almost home. Then they could get busy doing what they were supposed to have been doing while we were gone.
We have just finished Advent – a season of waiting to celebrate the arrival of Jesus Christ into this world. Jesus came. He lived here on earth, He died, and He is risen. Yet there is one more event that we are still waiting for. Jesus will be coming again.
In our passage today, Jesus tells us how we are to wait for his return. He tells a parable about servants who are tasked with keeping their master’s house while he is away. If you turn to the same account in Matthew, you will see that this is also when Jesus gives the Parable of the 10 Virgins and the Parable of the Bags of Gold (Matthew 25). The owner is away, and the servants have been given work to do while he is gone.
In our me-centered world, it’s all too easy to forget that we are the servants in this parable, not the owner of the house. We are here to do Jesus’ work, not our own. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are to be his witnesses to the world (Acts 1:8), given the task of making disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20). When our master comes again, he will ask us how we have completed our work. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matt 25:40).
Unlike our boys, who can get an alert before their parents come home, we don’t know when we will be called to give an account. Whether in the evening, or at midnight, or like Peter when the rooster crowed… All we know for sure, is that Jesus will come again.
As we begin a new year, with all its resolutions and high hopes, what kind of people should we be? Peter answers that question with these words “You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.” (2 Peter 3:11-12). May we be a people focused on serving our Lord Jesus Christ. May we be caught living holy and godly lives, doing his work for his kingdom, ready for his return.
Awake, alert and joyfully obedient to our task.
To Him be the glory both now and forever! Amen