What does the word Watchfulness mean, as used in the Holy Scriptures? It means, being on the look-out, living in expectation of Jesus Christ, doing His work, attending to His charge, occupying ourselves so as to improve the talents, one or more, He has entrusted to us, trying to do the best with our Lord's money that He may receive His own with interest. In short, watchfulness means leading that sort of life which, were it to be broken off tomorrow, would turn to our great gain.
I. Watchfulness implies that we are looking for Christ, living in expectation of His coming living, that is, with the recollection of our mortality, as knowing that in any case our time on earth is short, that the day must soon be here when we shall die. The reluctance to think about death is a great stumbling-block to us all. It prevents our making any due preparation against it. They were wiser among the heathen of old, who in the midst of their banquets, used to have carried round the figure of one dead, with this inscription, "Eat and drink, for you will soon be as this."
II. Consider what will be the life of the watchful Christian of him who is indeed waiting for his Lord. It will be a life of sobriety, a life of active service, a life of patient continuance in well-doing, a life whose end and aim is to be approved by the Master when He cometh. In the parables of the Talents and of the Pounds we have the warning of a soul lost, not for committing gross sins, but simply for inactivity for keeping its powers laid up, hiding from use its Lord's money; and surely that is a warning that must come home to many of us. For who of us has laboured as he might for God's glory and his fellow-creature's good? Who of us, Were he summoned today, could produce a life of which the greater part of its energies had been turned to work the Lord's work? Are we not rather chargeable, in our conscience, with the offence of having wasted our Lord's goods, of having squandered on ourselves, or on mere pleasure, those powers, that wealth, that influence, which were put into our hand to be administered for far higher and nobler ends? Let us watch and pray, that His coming may not take us by surprise. Then we shall be glad and not sorry when the time of our watching is at an end. He will make us full of joy with the light of His countenance.
R. D. B. Rawnsley, Sermons in Country Churches,p. 107.
References: Mark 13:35. Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 169. Mark 13:35-37. D. Fraser, Metaphors of the Gospels,p. 243.