Being ready.

Everything that is done well in life requires preparation. Anything that is major or important in life requires preparation. Spontaneity is neither needed nor required for important events, preparation is. A good preparation involves planning, practice and readiness. The Olympics is a sport’s competition that shows us that. Athletes will come from various countries around the world to compete against each other in a variety of disciplines for their country. To be able to make it on a country’s team, each athlete must demonstrate their capabilities and readiness for the Olympics. The entire process will involve various qualifying rounds and only the very best will make it on the team to represent their country. It is a great privilege to be able to represent one’s country at such a high level. One might say, for an athlete, simply making it to the Olympics team is a lifetime achievement on its own. The preparation for such prestigious competitions is demanding as it should given the quality of the event and of the athletes. It is simply delightful to be able to watch an athlete competing in the Olympics win a gold medal. Such athletes make their discipline and what they are doing look effortless at times. The sheer joy at the end of winning a medal is pure happiness for the athlete including us – the audience – to behold.  Towards the end of his ministry on earth, Jesus often talked about being ready for his coming, reiterating to the disciples in many parables that they must be ready for his coming. It is of that readiness I would like to focus on in this post.

To be ready for something, you ought to be alert, you ought to be prepared for that very thing. As noted earlier, athletes are ready for the Olympics because they have prepared themselves for that event their entire lives. Likewise, Christians, in order to be ready for the Lord’s coming should be preparing themselves for that event. In Matthew 25, Jesus talks about the parable of the ten virgins to illustrate the importance of being ready at all times. Among the ten virgins, you have five wise and five foolish. When the story unfolds, we are told that the wise virgins brought oil for their lamps with them while the foolish ones did not bring any. It is as though; the foolish virgins assumed the bridegroom whom they were waiting for would come on time. We are not told in the parable why the bridegroom was being late in coming but we are told that all virgins, foolish and wise alike felt asleep and were woken from their sleep in a rush (at midnight) to welcome the bridegroom. At this point, the virgins trimmed their lamps. Those who had brought extra oil for their lamps were able to trim theirs and get ready to welcome the bridegroom but the ones that didn’t have any couldn’t trim theirs. In the chaos of everything, the foolish virgins asked the wise ones if they could share some of their oil with them but the wise ones responded in a way that at first glance seems contrary to what Jesus would teach in terms of helping a brother in need. However, Jesus praises the wise virgins for what they did. The wise virgins realized that their priority was the bridegroom, it was to be found ready and available for the bridegroom that they had been prepared for all along, therefore, they were not going to jeopardize the very reason they were there for by helping others. Since the wise virgins only had enough oil for themselves, sharing that oil would have disqualified them from meeting the bridegroom. At this point, I assume, having a bright lamp was a key element to meeting the bridegroom or it was a key element to getting ready for him. In any case, it was important to have your lamp trimmed and bright enough to be seen and to see. I believe the lesson for us here, aside from the obvious one Jesus states at the end of that parable: to be ready at all times (vs 13), is to be focused and know our priorities. We ought to know what is important for us as we wait for Christ, we ought to remember our goal as followers of Christ and prepare ourselves for that very day not letting it surprise us but being ready as commanded by Jesus. The important thing for us, is to be found faithful by our master, we want to hear the “well done, good and faithful servant!… Come and share your master’s happiness!” (verses 21, and 23) . We want to live lives pleasing to our God, focusing on what He delights in so that when He comes, we are indeed ready for heaven. That is why, we ought to love the things that the Lord Jesus loved, we ought to seek the fruits of the Spirit, we ought to imitate Jesus. Failure to do and love those things will not make us enjoy heaven rather, it will show that we were not made for it. I believe, Christians easily lose sight of what is a priority for them. Being prepared and ready for the Lord’s coming requires knowing and not losing sight of your priority which is the kingdom of heaven. That is why many times, Jesus encourages us to seek the kingdom of God first and everything else will be granted to us (Matthew 6:33). Not doing that makes us focus on the now and then to the point where we forget who we are and what we have been saved for. We were saved for eternity with the Father, this world is only temporary.

Therefore, let us prepare ourselves, train ourselves for heavenly things, setting our hearts on things above (Colossians 3:2), on what the Spirit delights in rather than on what our flesh wants. This is not an easy task, which is probably why Jesus asks us to be ready, or that Paul uses the metaphor of competing in a race because it assumes difficulty in the preparation which is necessary to win. Just as our athletes prepare themselves for one day, in all seasons, putting their bodies to extreme pain at times, we too, must put to death the desires of the flesh, we must seek the things of God – spending time with Him in prayer, meditation and bible reading; seeking to do His will in everything we do, living in a manner worthy of Him, that is in obedience to Him. It is not easy, but it is all worth it in the end. A cliché sentence but one that remains true nonetheless.