The Night Shift at Cape Hatteras

In 1999, Kevin Duffus interviewed one of the last living lighthouse keepers from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The old keeper described his nightly routine with startling precision: trim the wick at sunset, wind the clockwork mechanism every four hours, polish the Fresnel lens at midnight, and never — not once — let the light go dark. Ships depended on it. Lives depended on it.

"Weren't you tempted to sleep?" Duffus asked.

The keeper shook his head. "You don't sleep when someone's counting on the light."

He explained that the most dangerous nights were the calm ones. When storms raged, every keeper stayed sharp. But on quiet, still evenings — when the sea lay flat and no ships appeared on the horizon — that was when drowsiness crept in. That was when keepers failed.

Jesus tells His disciples something remarkably similar in Mark 13. The Son of Man will come at an hour no one expects — evening, midnight, when the rooster crows, or at dawn. The command is not to predict the moment but to stay awake through every kind of night, the turbulent and the tranquil alike.

Most of us handle crisis well. We pray harder in the storm. But the Almighty calls us to a deeper faithfulness — the kind that keeps the light burning on ordinary Tuesday nights when nothing seems urgent and no one seems to be watching. Because Someone is always counting on the light.