"Ready or Not, Hear I Come."

After worship services on March 17, I heard these words uttered by a young child who was playing hide and seek with her two sisters. While listening to them being spoken several times, I began to ponder what spiritual lesson could be gleaned from six words that have been a part of a children's game for many years, perhaps for several centuries.

The more I carefully thought about them, I realized that they reveal an important lesson about the second coming of Christ. When Christ comes, his appearance will take place during a day and time that no man will neither know about nor successfully predict. "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only," (Matthew 24:36).

When He does return, it will happen unannounced while we are conducting our lives on a normal basis, whether we are at work, at home, worshiping with the saints or enjoying an activity with family and friends. This will occur if he appears while we are alive. Those who have already been laid to rest since the day when God "created the heavens and the earth," (Genesis 1:1), will be called by the Lord to rise up from their grave, whether they are in the ground, cremated or buried at sea.

How do we become prepared for His coming? First, if we are not a child of God, we need to become one by being baptized in water for the remission of sins (Acts 2:38). Becoming a Christian also involves opening your heart to hearing the word of God, believing that what you have been taught is the truth, repent of your sins and confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the true and living God.

If your are a Christian and have not lived in a way that is pleasing in the sight of God, you need to repent of you sins through prayer and live our lives more righteously throughout every hour of each day until we take our last breath and pass from this life (Revelation 2:10). James also refers to this when he says "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him," (James 1:12).

With these thoughts in mind, let us do everything we can in order to be prepared for our last day on earth, because, ready or not, Christ is coming.

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