Wise as Serpents. Day 3.

            Have you ever seen a snake blink?  No?  Neither have I.  It is easy for them, they don't have any eyelids.  Have you ever gotten into a staring contest with someone?  It can't go on for too long without your eyes starting to burn.  But that doesn't excuse us from keeping our eyes open.

            Over and over again in scripture we are instructed to "watch".  Let's look at a few:

            1Peter 4:7b    "be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer."

            Matthew 26:41 "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak."

            Mark 13:35a "Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh."

            So what exactly are we to be watching for?  I chose these three verses because they each give a specific answer to this question.  The first verse lets us see that when we "watch" we are to be both sober, which means alert and with our full faculty, not half heartily or only when we are not doing something else, and also that this "watching" is an expectant thing that is coupled with waiting.  Watching unto prayer. 

            So now we are watching unto prayer.  The second verse clues us in a bit more.  What is this prayer to be?  That we enter not into temptation.  So when the two are coupled we see that while we are sober we are to be "on the look out for" the enemy who will tempt us.  The irony is cute.  In the bible Satan is referred to as "that old serpent".  So we learn from the serpent to be "on the look out for" the spiritual serpent.  I love it.  Just as the snake is always on the look out for its next meal or a predator we too must be on the look out for the answers to our prayers and our predators.

            And of course we must always be watching in anticipation of the return of our Lord.  This is where many loose the desire to watch.  They can understand the other types of watching, like watching your step or watching for your ride to pick you up from work.  But to be watching for the return of Christ, that's a bit too much to swallow for some.  But the verse doesn't say that we don't know if the master cometh, it says that we don't know when the master cometh.  Oh He is on His way, we can count on that.  That fact is what drives so much of what we, as Christians, do.  It is that very expectant waiting for Him to arrive.

            So get out the tooth picks to prop open those eyelids and put on another pot of coffee 'cause weez a got some a watchin' to do.

SDG