NOTES for Th1 5:6
It is certainly not about the duration of our sleep. The apostle Paul speaks about sleep and drunkenness as images of being in darkness and opposes them to being in the light - watch and sober.
We really like to relax - by sleeping or with idle talks after a small glass of Vodka (or big glass!). And we can also without any drink – just separated intrinsically from any problems, ours and those of others. We know to perceive even Christian life as a refuge, the niche, where we can hide from the difficulties of this world. We try to use the Good News, as a dose of drug facilitating life for us.
But there is also another reason, sometimes even unconsciously, for our desire to hide in the shade: the wish to send to sleep the conscience or to do violence to it. "All cats are grey in the night" -our own blackness is not so visible in a dark background. But the light reveals it to us, and to others.
That’s apparently why Paul calls us, Christians, to watch and be sober, to resist this enervation, this desire to hide from the world and from God, to be constantly aimed to prayer and the deeds of charity.