2023-06-03 A Meditation on Night Watch

“12 Now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brothers, but it was not at all his will to come now. He will come when he has opportunity. 13 Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. 14 Let all that you do be done in love. 15 Now I urge you, brothers—you know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia, and that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints— 16 be subject to such as these, and to every fellow worker and laborer. 17 I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus, because they have made up for your absence, 18 for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours. Give recognition to such people.” (1 Co 16:12–18 ESV)

A watch of the day or night comes with a burden: at some point, we can care no longer. At some point, we give in to the sleep. At some point, it can feel, we bear the blame for something missed. A floundering friend. An enemy’s advance. A rewind and do it all over again of some heightened brinksmanship, some life lived dangerously or in need of supervision, or on the edge. Drugs, panic attacks, self-harm, going coldly, bravely but coldly, into one’s respective night.

When a word in season would have sealed the deal, earned the prize, harkened to the melodious interdwelling, communal life, respective needs and gifts in return. Yet we sleep. Yet we stare wild-eyed into space. Yet we cease literally to make a fuss, rather preferring our own little domain of rest.

Or we don’t. Or we listen, and awaken, and rise to celebrate in theory, in fact played out, the beauty of plain life, neighboring life, ideals lived into, the ideal of making of ourselves a fine adversary to the satanic hordes. But like Jesus’ disciples as they prayed on the eve of His crucifixion, we fall into sleep, too.

And in this self-reflection, we learn what brand of spirit possesses the near enemy, the sleepwalk they are engaged in, the refusal to heighten the gaze to a beauteous outpouring, excitement, life together lived into a New Era. Somehow, tragedy strikes, and war is waged on the terms the enemy chooses. So we are bold to make a day of what is wakeful and alert in our spirits, that we may the better ease into the night season. We are bold to monitor our own sloth whilst fasting hungry, low blood sugar, or awakening tired ‘midst the night. Midst the time duly owed unto our rest and personal betterment. To dreams untold, of trials and high supervisor peering in, of leaning on a friend as the solution to a puzzle, if only we would remember the number, of who knows what.

Yet tormented by the mental game, low blood sugar, the particle entanglement, our fast from food and alertness seeming to match up with a prayed-over fight at a distance… then our breakage met with the attack; our falling into slumber met with the racy dream or the foreign headline. All this lived into in faith, in a maddening teaching: you are relying on Law, and must accept immediate mercy and catch-up, stop playing catch-up: you are today caught up, by Christ’s blood. See? Your own sanctity is nonetheless just as sinful as ever before, as you bear responsibility now for untold worlds of opinion and scary walks into the night season of a friend or a neighbor. If you can pray it, you can feel it: it was you fell asleep. It is you failed to alert to the vision. It was you, imperfect and plaintive, pleading for attention if only because it heightens the sense of duty: duty that we love and bide our time with, duty not to fall into slumber, not to put on the telling pounds, to be the ones alert and at the ready. For Jesus imputes Himself unto us, teaching us of discovered spiritual wealth and of personal ability for a world to pray, as others fall asleep and as others mask all of it with blithe oversight as to the facts of the matter: hell is knocking at the door, each inch is contested, we do well to serve, but do better to accept Mercy. We do better to allow the sacrifice of others that we may live into a new day. We are recipients of their service and sacrifice. Great things are in order this day.