Are You Ready?

Are You Ready? My, what an important but unspecific question. For what are we supposed to be ready? Dinner? Church? Bedtime? A Meeting? As a Boy Scout, our motto was Be Prepared. For what? For anything and everything! Be Ready, Be Prepared, and On Call all carry the same emphasis or meaning. Each one signifies that something or somethings must be done prior to the event or happening for which you are to be ready.

While I don't remember the exact time or words since I was very young, I am sure that I was told by my parents to get ready for dinner or bed. Preparation for dinner meant washing my hands (both of them). Preparation for bed meant putting away toys and putting on pajamas. As a preschooler, I learned that I had to prepare or get ready for certain activities.

In 1953, I started the First Grade in Temple, Texas, at Vandiver Elementary School with Miss Hardcastle as my teacher. When she asked the class what we expected to learn in first grade, many answered with "learn to read." She said that is a good goal. Then she clarified that with the fact that before we could learn to read, we first had to learn the letters of the alphabet because every word in any book is made up of letters of the alphabet. At least she didn't make us start with War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy on day one. Then the next day she added to our preparation burden with a number line saying we had to learn the numbers 1 through 10 so that we could count, add, and subtract (at least she didn't mention algebra or calculus). First Grade was to get us ready for even more complex subjects in the future.

High School teachers emphasized that they were helping us get ready for college. College professors told us they were helping us get ready for the workplace. And would you believe that the workplace told us that we had a lot to learn to be ready to be a useful and effective employee at this job.

We spend a lifetime getting ready - marriage, parenting, and countless other areas of this journey called life. For my wife and me, we are at an age when we are preparing for the future of ourselves and our children and grandchildren. This preparation involves wills, powers of attorney, trusts, and numerous others legal terms that someone else has to define for us. Once these are completed, we may feel that we are truly prepared and ready.

However, all these different steps of readiness and preparation beginning at a young age to a more mature age may lead us to believe all is prepared, but what if we have missed the most important preparation of all? The length of our life varies greatly. Some people live to be 100 while others only live a few years. At some point, we will all die. All the legal things I mentioned in the paragraph above help prepare us for that death, but the real question is are we prepared for the life after death?

Some people believe that there is no life after death. However, the Bible speaks a great deal about life after death, and our role in that afterlife is based on whether we have chosen to accept Jesus' death and resurrection as truth and believe in Him, inviting Him into our lives as Savior and Lord. The Bible makes clear that those whose trust is in Jesus will be with Him in heaven. Those who have rejected Him will spend the eternal afterlife in hell. My intent in this blog is not to preach a sermon but to create awareness by which every reader may evaluate their readiness and preparation for both this life and the next. Following are some references from the Bible that can help you or a friend evaluate your readiness for all of life.

• John 3:1-21

• Romans 3:23

• Romans 5:8

• Romans 6:23

• 1 John 1:9

The question will always be before us - "Are You Ready". Each of us can only answer for one person, ourselves. This week I pray that we will make sure that all of our needed preparation is complete.