Are you ready?

Our lives require constant preparation for the next thing. Preparing for visitors to arrive. Writing lesson plans. Thinking about an upcoming presentation. Getting ready to catch the train. Cleaning for spring. Revising for that really important exam. Preparing your thesis for submission. Cooking for Sunday lunch. Organising a party for the milestone age which has come round far too quickly. Waiting for the arrival of a new baby. Preparing for the next job interview. And so on...

We throw all of our efforts into the looming event or deadline. Whether momentarily or for weeks or even months the end goal takes over our thoughts and actions. It can be as if we put our lives on hold until the time arrives.

For some the joy is in preparing well in advance, for others it is in the thrill of pulling everything together at the last minute. I definitely fall into the former category, with my panic alert set well above the necessary threshold.

I was challenged recently about how I live day to day. I spend so much time preparing for things on earth that I so often put off eternal preparations. But we need to be ready, we can't keep putting it off.

‘Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.’ Matthew 24:42-44

My default position is to feel disheartened by the fact that there are so many things that spend my time on that I have built up to be so important and big to me. I daily fall back into my short-sighted temporary focus and push aside the eternal.

But it’s wrong to think that what we do now isn’t important. A friend reminded me that although what we do day to day is temporary, it is through the temporary that we live for the eternal. 

We are in the waiting – and we don’t know how long it will last. In the busyness of all our deadlines, exams and expectations in this temporary world how are you investing in and readying yourself (and others) for the eternal?

‘The secret is Christ in me and not me in a different set of circumstances.’ Elizabeth Elliot