The Lighthouse Keeper's Vigil

On the night of September 7, 1838, a violent storm battered the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast of England. Most sensible people had shuttered their windows and gone to bed. But twenty-two-year-old Grace Darling had not abandoned her post at the Longstone Lighthouse. Through sheets of rain and the howling dark, she pressed her face to the glass and kept watch.

Just before dawn, she spotted something — figures clinging to the wreckage of the SS Forfarshire, which had broken apart on the rocks of Big Harcar. Nine survivors were fighting for their lives in the freezing sea. Grace and her father William launched a small coble boat into waves that would have terrified seasoned sailors. They rowed nearly a mile through the fury and brought every survivor safely to shore.

Grace Darling became a national hero, but she would have told you the secret was nothing heroic at all. She simply stayed awake when it would have been easier to sleep. She kept watching when the darkness offered every reason to look away.

Jesus closes His great discourse in Mark 13 with a single, repeated command: "Watch!" He tells of a master who leaves his house and orders the doorkeeper to stay alert. "You do not know when the owner of the house will come back," He warns — "whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn." The faithful life is not about predicting the hour. It is about being found at your post, eyes open, lamp burning, when the Master returns.