Mark 13:18 Meaning and Explanation

One more word about the flight from Judaea: pray about its timing. Winter in that land meant cold rains, mired roads, and streambeds swollen into impassable torrents — small obstacles on an ordinary day, deadly ones for families running for the hills.

The command is remarkable for what it assumes: prayer can bear on the circumstances of a trial that must come. The tribulation is certain; its season, Jesus implies, is something to ask God about. So his people learn to pray not only for deliverance from hardship but about its details — the weather of our trials, the timing, the mercies at the margins. No concern is too practical for prayer, because no detail of his people's path is beneath the Father's care.