Watch Therefore: For Ye Know Not What Hour
It’s three in the morning. The only sound is the low hum of the refrigerator, a lonely sentinel in the deep quiet of your home. You’re waiting. Maybe for the sound of a teenager’s car in the driveway, or for sleep to finally take you, or for an answer to a prayer that has hung in the air for years. We all know this feeling of watching, of quiet expectation that fills the empty spaces of life. Jesus taps right into that universal human posture when He speaks of two women grinding at a mill, their hands dusty with flour, their minds occupied with the day's bread. It's a picture of the mundane, the absolutely necessary, the rhythm of life itself.
And right into that rhythm, the Lord speaks a jarring truth. An interruption. "The one shall be taken, and the other left." The separation is sudden, decisive, and it has nothing to do with who was the better worker or who ground the finer flour. The entire point is readiness, a state of the heart that transcends the task at hand. His command, born from this stark image, is not a suggestion but a lifeline for the soul: "Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come." This isn't a call to quit our work, to abandon the mill of our daily responsibilities, but a command to infuse that work with a constant, living awareness that the owner of the field is about to appear on the horizon.
This completely reframes how we approach the Lord's Table. Communion is not a funeral. It's not a dusty memorial service for a hero long gone. It is a watch-night service. It is the gathering of the King's servants who are actively expecting His return. Every time we break that bread, every time we raise that cup, we are fulfilling the Apostle Paul's instruction to proclaim the Lord's death "till he come." We look back, yes, with a gratitude that should break our hearts, but we also look forward with an anticipation that should mend them. The table is our watchtower, a place where memory fuels our hope for His imminent arrival.
Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.— Matthew 24:42, KJV
Meat in Due Season
Our first instinct is to try and manufacture our own readiness, isn't it? We turn watching into a frantic, performance-based anxiety, like the goodman of the house who, if he’d only known the hour, would have stayed up all night with his sword drawn, pacing and sweating. We build checklists of spiritual disciplines, we tally our good deeds, and we polish our religious resumes, hoping to present a respectable front when the Master arrives. But this kind of watchfulness is a product of fear, not faith, and it always curdles into either prideful exhaustion or the bitter resentment of the evil servant who begins to think the master is never coming back, giving him license to abuse his position.
The glorious, soul-settling truth of the Gospel is that our readiness is not a state we achieve but a Person we receive. His name is Jesus. The blessing isn't for the servant who has a perfect record, but for the one whom his lord, when he comes, finds "so doing." Doing what, exactly? Giving them "meat in due season." He is simply found faithful in his assigned task, which is to care for the Master’s household by distributing the Master’s provisions. His focus is outward, on the needs of his fellowservants, not inward on the state of his own soul, because he trusts the lord who appointed him. Our readiness is found not in self-inspection but in Christ-occupation.
Jesus draws the line in the sand right here. The faithful servant knows he's a steward, a manager of goods that are not his own, and his whole life operates from that humble understanding. The evil servant's downfall begins with a single, corrupting thought whispered in the secret place of his heart: "My lord delayeth his coming." That lie is the poison that turns a servant into a tyrant. He begins to smite and to feast with the drunken because he has forgotten his identity and his accountability. The communion meal is our antidote to that poison, the strong medicine that reminds us who the Lord is, what He has provided, and that His return is not delayed, but divinely appointed.
Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season?— Matthew 24:45, KJV
Between the Passover and the Parable
This faithful watching doesn't look like a monk in a cell, detached from the world. It looks like a father patiently explaining the same math problem for the third time. It looks like a wife choosing a soft answer when her husband's words are sharp. It's the quiet, unseen decision to extend grace to a difficult neighbor or to pray for an enemy, all because you know the Lord of the house could step through the door at any second. This is how we give out meat in due season. We distribute the grace we have been given in the ordinary, messy, beautiful context of our daily lives, and in doing so, we make the mundane sacred.
So please, hear me, friend. Stop striving to be ready. Just rest in being His. Your true readiness was secured in an upper room in Jerusalem as "the feast of unleavened bread drew nigh, which is called the Passover." It was there, in the shadow of the cross, that the Lamb of God made a covenant in His blood to make you clean, to make you His, to make you ready for His return. It's in this very same passage that Satan enters Judas and Jesus warns Peter of his coming failure. Our capacity to watch is laughably small, but our security rests in the One who sweated drops of blood while watching for us in the garden. The communion table is where we confess our weakness and receive His supernatural strength.
To walk day by day in this grace is to be liberated from the exhausting cycle of spiritual self-assessment. You can stop taking your own temperature every five minutes. The expectation of His coming shifts from the fearful dread of a thief in the night to the joyful anticipation of a Bridegroom returning for His bride. This means that when you fail, when you have a moment where you act like that wicked servant, you don't run away in shame. You run back to the table. You run to the bread and the cup, which are the tangible symbols of a covenant that cannot be broken by your inconsistency, and you are restored, reminded, and made ready once more by His blood.
Now the feast of unleavened bread drew nigh, which is called the Passover.— Luke 22:1, KJV
A Certain and Sudden Return
Here is the bedrock truth on which we build our lives. It is not a suggestion or a possibility; it is a divine declaration. "The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of." The certainty of His return is absolute; the timing of it is a complete mystery. This isn't a threat meant to scare us into good behavior. It's a profound statement of reality designed to wean our hearts from the temporary things of this world and fix our gaze on the eternal. We live differently when we live in light of a guaranteed future, a promised reunion that could happen at any moment.
The most insidious danger to a child of God is not some spectacular, headline-grabbing sin. It is the slow, silent, creeping rot of spiritual complacency. It is the quiet lie that takes root in an unguarded heart: "My lord delayeth his coming." This single thought grants us permission to lower our standards, to make peace with the world, to forget our holy calling and to "eat and drink with the drunken." Communion is God's gift to shock our sleepy souls awake. It is the sounding of the trumpet in the middle of the week, a piercing cry that says, "Remember! Watch! He is coming!" This simple meal cuts through the fog of our daily routines and reminds us that this world is not our home, and our King is coming to take us to the place He has prepared.
The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of,— Matthew 24:50, KJV
So as you come to His table, come with this holy tension held firmly in your heart. Look back with a gratitude so deep it hurts, remembering the cross that made you eternally ready. Look around you with a servant’s compassion, called to give meat in due season to the hungry souls in God’s household. And then, lift your eyes and look forward with a breathless, joyful anticipation, because in such an hour as you think not, the Son of man cometh. You are not watching for a thief who comes to steal, but for a King who comes to claim His own. The feast is prepared not just in memory, but in promise. Come, eat, drink, and watch. Your Lord is so very near.