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The Cathedral of Lausanne sits like an ancient guard on a hillside in Switzerland. Below, homes cluster tightly together down to the shores of Lake Geneva. For centuries the cathedral bells have rung, keeping time for the people below.
On a crisp October night in 1405, the bells rang with urgency. A fire had started and was quickly spreading from one wooden home to the next. The bells stirred everyone to action, and a night watchman was placed on lookout in the bell tower to watch for new fires.
More than six hundred years have passed since that devastating night, yet not a night has passed without a watchman standing guard. As the bell signals the passing hour, he cups his hands and calls down the hillside: “This is the watchman! The bell has rung!”— letting the townspeople know that all was well. Their security and safety rested on his vigilance.
While our hearts are not made of wooden walls or thatched roofs, the desires of our hearts are quick to catch fire and need a close watch. The heart drives our actions, words, and life trajectory: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Prov. 4:23). This watchfulness is born from humility, realizing that our hearts are new in Christ, but are still quick to accommodate sin and needing to be exercised in obedience to and dependence on God. “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh” (Rom. 13:14).
The Puritan pastor John Flavel counseled: “The keeping and right managing of the heart in every condition is the great business of a Christian’s life.” At first glance, this seems to appeal to our modern appetite for self-analysis, but this “keeping of the heart” is very different. It’s a looking within to see what needs to be cut off, forsaken, and repented of so that we can be renewed in Christ and exercised in faithful living.
Watchfulness is done in faith and vulnerability, inviting the Holy Spirit to search our hearts and help us see. It’s recognizing that the sarcastic remark might be rooted in bitterness, the halfhearted worship rooted in love for the idols of our hearts, the fear rooted in a lack of trust in God’s character, and the tense relationship rooted in a failure to love. It’s an honest look at pride that shows up in our lives as selfishness, ingratitude, or self-absorption.
Recognition comes as the Word shines on our hearts and as the Spirit renews our minds, prompting repentance and obedience. It is a discipline born not out of hatred for self but out of love in response to God’s love for us and out of belief in what He says about our hearts: we’re new in Christ, yet sin still clings to us. Our hearts need watchfulness and His preservation.
The watchman likely had many things to distract him: nesting pigeons, the sunset, people bustling about in the city below, sleepiness. We also have many things that demand our attention, but in all the busyness, keeping the heart is vital as we look to Jesus in repentance, faith, and joy.