Watch and Pray

Watch and Pray

It is a well-known phenomenon that some events are so huge, so overwhelming, that they exceed our comprehension.  We don’t see them coming, until we are placed before accomplished facts.  Sometimes we don’t want to see them at all, and act as if nothing is the matter.  Think of the two world wars which, in hindsight, announced themselves long before, but people were asleep.  Sometimes they are gifts we don’t recognize because we are blind to the signs of the time.

That is how it went with the coming of the great prophets, the saints, the initiates, and most of all with the coming of Christ.  They were not recognized.  Thus, humanity is time and again surprised by destiny and fate, by gift and crisis that befall us.  Such a gift, which at the same time brings about a crisis, is the second coming of Christ—an event that for one person is more real than anything else and is not seen by another.  The only way to recognize His coming is: wakefulness.  The only way to prepare for His coming is: prayer.

“Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation.” (Mt.26:41) These words, spoken in the loneliness of prayer of Gethsemane, are a timeless call, not only on each human being separately, but also on every community that wants to follow Him.  If a community wants to become the body of Christ, the individual members again and again have to step across their own shadows in order to recognize the light of the Coming One in the other—in friend and enemy, proponent and opponent.

Watch and pray, that His coming may not pass you by without a trace!

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, December 20, 2020