Always Ready

Whether we know it or not, we humans are always getting ready, trying to prepare for whatever may be coming next. We're getting ready for school, for work, for the Thanksgiving trip to Grandma's house. We prepare for all the tasks and responsibilities of being a grown-up, whether the weekly routine of taking out the trash or the seasonal tasks like installing your car's snow tires. Then there's that moment that in one form another comes to all of us, preparing for our end, when a doctor may tell us, "I'm sorry but it's time to put your affairs in order. There's nothing more we can do for you."

For Christians, though, this perpetual need for getting ready takes on a different dimension. We frame "getting ready" or "preparing" in the light of God's presence and direction in our lives.

And that emphasis on "getting ready" is what Always Ready - A Christian Mandate addresses. Always Ready is a series of reflections on the need for Christians to be responsive at all times to God's leading. Based on Jesus' parable of the ten virgins, in Matthew 25, these reflections explore various aspects of readiness-or unreadiness-in the believer's life. The book addresses several questions:

• What precisely do we mean by "readiness"?
• How do we attain such "readiness"?
• What exactly are we to be ready for?
• Is readiness an all-or-nothing condition, as the parable of the bridesmaids (in Matthew 25) suggests, or can we be partly or "sort of" ready?
• Are there lessons to be learned from Jesus' life and His own preparation for His ministry?
• And two ultimate questions, which are inextricably linked: How do I get ready for Jesus' second coming or, if I should die before His return, how do I prepare for my life's end?

Building on this parable, and Jesus' own example of how He was ready at all times to live out his Father's will, the book's forty-one are divided into several sections, such as "Getting Ready" and "Dealing with Unreadiness." Also addressed is the problem of misguided readiness, which Jesus encountered with the hardworking Martha fussing over having everything ready for His visit when she should have focused on Him instead. Another section deals with the need to be in a state of perpetual readiness for the end of our lives.

This book explores how Christians, in all walks of life and at all stages of their Christian journey, are to live distinctively because of a simple reality: God expects us, at every moment, to be ready to "live Christianly," whether it is in the routine moments or the unexpected ones. God requires of us a mindset of being always prepared to live as His people, and to be prepared for anything.