STAYING PREPARED

      The idea of “being prepared” seems to surface from time to time in our daily lives. When a health or financial crisis comes our way, we wonder if we have enough insurance and resources to carry us. We stop and ask ourselves, “Am I prepared?” We prepare for a vacation, a trip, or a new job. We discover the need to be prepared in so many places in our lives as we make plans for careers, marriage, and retirement.

      Some of us take the idea of preparedness very seriously, while others seem to get along fine with less preparation. You may remember the story of the ant that spent the summer preparing for the winter by storing up food. However, the grasshopper used the summertime to play his fiddle and dance the days away. The grasshopper came to an unhappy end, while the ant enjoyed the winter, happy and warm.

      Of course, there is a spiritual application to this lesson of preparedness. We read from scripture the necessity of allowing the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit to prepare our lives for a different kind of living than the world embraces. We see our need to change the way we live, the need for forgiveness, and the need for a relationship with Jesus. After we have accepted this new life, God’s grace begins to prepare us for holy living and the ministry of witnessing to others.

      Once we have a transforming story, we are mandated by Jesus to tell the story. Scripture tells us that we must always be ready to tell others the good news. We must be prepared as Paul writes in 2Timothy 4:2, “Proclaim the message. Be ready, prepared, persistent, whether it is convenient or inconvenient. Correct, confront, and encourage with patience.” Peter tells us in 1Peter3:15,16, “ When anyone asks you to speak of your hope, be ready…Yet do it with respectful humility…”

      Henri Nouwen, from “Time Enough to Minister,” in Leadership, gives us an excellent example of being and remaining in a state of preparedness. Nouwen had gone to a monastery for solitude and prayer, but while there was asked to give a series of lectures to some students. His answer was, “Why should I spend all my sabbatical time preparing all those lectures?” The answer from the abbot came, “Prepare? You have been a Christian for forty years, and a few high school students want to have a retreat. Why do you have to prepare? All those years of prayers, worship, scripture reading, and communion with God should have given you enough material for ten retreats.” 

      Nouwen continues, “The question, you see, is not to prepare but to live in a state of ongoing preparedness so that, when someone is drowning in the world comes into your world, you are ready to reach out and help.”

      Are we keeping our spiritual life up-to-date with the continual teaching and preparation of the Holy Spirit? When we meet someone who needs to hear our story and the “Jesus story,” are we prepared to tell it? Or, are we unprepared?

       Let us make sure we are prepared not only to meet Jesus one day face to face, but that we are ready to meet Jesus in the faces of those in our path each day.

Pastor Tim McConnell, Long’s Chapel UMC, July 14, 2013