Picture this: a young woman named Sarah spent her entire childhood waiting. Her father whom she was extremely fond of, was a traveling salesman who would leave home for months at a time, always promising to return on specific days. Sarah would sit by the window with her mother, both of them dressed nicely, both of them ready for him.
Her mother would prepare special meals, keep the house immaculate, and they would wait. Sometimes he showed up on time, sometimes a bit late. Sometimes he didn’t. When he did, he stayed for a few days and left again. Sarah’s mother taught her that love meant being perpetually ready, and perpetually disappointed.
Years later, Sarah struggled with relationships. She had exhausted herself for people who never showed up, or who showed up inconsistently. Readiness had become her prison, not her virtue.
Here is where Jesus does something profoundly different in today’s Gospel. In His parable, the servants are praised for being ready, but not because waiting itself is holy. The waiting is rewarded because of what comes after. The master returns and does the unthinkable; he ties an apron around his waist and serves them. The entire power structure flips. The waited-for becomes the servant. The waiting doesn’t end in validation, but in communion, celebration, in relationship, in a shared meal.
There is a kind of holiness that only happens at night. You won’t find it in sunlight streaming through stained glass or in morning hymns. It is the holiness of keeping vigil. It’s found in a nurse adjusting a blanket for a sleeping patient, or in a firefighter sitting whole night beside the truck waiting for a call that may never come, or in a monk rising at midnight to pray when the world dreams. It’s a father rocking a restless child or whispering a prayer over a wife who can no longer speak. These are the saints of the night shift, people who keep vigil when others rest, who stay awake not out of fear but out of love.
Scripture is full of such vigils. Abraham looked at the stars and believed. Jacob wrestled with God until daybreak. Samuel heard his name called in the night. The Israelites marched out of Egypt under a midnight sky. Jesus was born while shepherds kept watch in the dark. And in another garden, under unbearable sorrow, He asked His friends, could you not watch one hour with me? God’s greatest work so often happens after sunset, when light feels farthest away.
In Jewish tradition, after a loved one dies, family members observe Shivah, seven days of mourning of sitting in vigil. It’s not a time for words but for togetherness, keeping vigil over grief, holding space for love that refuses to vanish in the dark. That’s what Christian waiting should feel like: not anxious anticipation, but faithful presence.
In every home and every heart, there are unseen, numerous night shifts of love, a mother checking the door one last time, a grandparent awake in prayer for their adult children, an elder sibling who refuses to stop caring. They don’t do it for recognition. They do it because love, by its nature, keeps vigil. It's a love that says, You matter enough that I’ll lose sleep for you.
So, keep watch, not to prove your worth, but to stay open to love’s arrival. Be the person who keeps the light burning when others grow tired, who keeps vigil when others turn away. Because in the end, those who keep vigil in the night will be the first to see the dawn.