The Midwife's Bag by the Door

Maria Gonzalez has been a midwife in rural New Mexico for twenty-two years. Every night before bed, she sets her medical bag by the front door — gloves, sterile supplies, a fresh set of scrubs folded on top. Her phone stays charged on the nightstand. Her car keys hang on the same hook, always.

"Babies don't check calendars," she says with a laugh. "They come when they come — two in the morning, Thanksgiving dinner, right in the middle of your daughter's quinceañera."

Maria has learned to live in what she calls "ready rest." She sleeps, she eats, she enjoys her family, but some part of her is always listening for the phone. Not with anxiety — with anticipation. Every call means new life is about to enter the world.

In Mark 13, Jesus tells His disciples to watch — not with dread, but with the alertness of servants who love their master and long for his return. "You do not know when the master of the house will come," He warns, "whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning."

The Christian life is not spent cowering in a bunker, bracing for cosmic catastrophe. It is lived like Maria — bag packed, heart ready, fully awake to the present moment because what is coming is not destruction but deliverance. The Son of Man arrives not to end the story but to bring it to its glorious beginning.

Keep watch. Not because the night is fearful, but because the dawn is worth waiting for.