You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
We have a name for people who take readiness so seriously that they devote time, space and resources to being ready for disaster. They want to be sure they and those they love can thrive when the rest of the planet is being obliterated. We call them “doomsday preppers” – or just “preppers.”
This Sunday’s gospel reading – and many of the readings we will hear during Advent – invite us to live ready: ready for the end of days, ready for judgment, ready for Christ to show up in our lives. But what kind of preparedness is Jesus asking of us? I suspect that the One who said we need to give up our lives in order to save them is not advocating preparation for survival so much as preparation for Life – the Life of God that comes to us now, the Life that will be, the Life that will never end.
That kind of preparation involves being prepared to give our stuff away, not to stockpile it; to work for the security of all, not just safety in our own bunkers; to live so that everyone around us can thrive. For the “end of days” happens daily in someone’s life, sometimes in the life of whole communities and nations. And judgment comes upon us, ready or not, as we suffer the consequences of our own actions, or someone else’s free will. And Christ shows up in our lives all the time, in so many ways, not just when he “comes in glory at the end of the ages.”
Being alert means being alive to where Jesus is showing up, to what God is doing around us, to how we are being invited to participate in God’s mission to bring wholeness to all of creation in Christ. Being ready means having space and time in our lives for God’s new thing, having the mental, emotional and spiritual capacity to take on God's mission when it finds us.
St. Peter writes that we are always to “be ready to give an account of the hope that is within you.” (Î Peter 3:15b) That’s the kind of prepper Jesus is inviting us to be, bearers of hope, no matter what.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
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