NOTES for Luk 21:29-33

What does Jesus mean when He asks us to keep watch? He is hardly asking us not to sleep. Yet often in our lives it happens that we are, as it were, asleep while awake. We may act energetically, work a great deal, and even have fun, but we notice little of the events taking place around us or the people living beside us. Keeping watch probably means being attentive to the world and to the people created by God. By watching and praying, we learn to receive this whole world and everything that happens to us, even what does not seem joyful to us, as a gift from God, and to recognize Christ in every person we meet.

Small children live this way; for them, important and unimportant events do not seem to exist. Every event is important and significant and brings many emotions and experiences. Of course, the ability to distinguish what is essential from what is secondary is important, including for a Christian, but we must try not to lose the ability to see what is secondary, because it is sometimes precisely through it that the Lord addresses us.