Be Prepared

Christ is coming!  You’ve been hearing this for two weeks.  Today you heard John the Baptist tell you again, “I am the voice of one calling in the desert, Make straight the way for the Lord.”  John the Baptist is calling us to prepare ourselves for the coming of the Christ! 

 

So how do we prepare ourselves for such a guest as Jesus Christ?  How do we make ourselves ready for the only Son of God?  Its hard enough preparing for a normal guest, let alone Jesus Christ.  I mean this isn’t your old college buddy, this isn’t weird Aunt Marge; this is the Prince of Peace, the Son of the Almighty, this is the Messiah! 

 

When Christie and I have guests over to our house for dinner we go all out in preparation.  We clean everything, and by everything, I mean everything.  We clean the kitchen, the stove, the floors, the bathroom, the computer room, the garbage can.  We even clean the bathtub (do we really think our dinner guests are going to be using the bathtub after they eat?).

 

Anyway, the point is that when we hear that a special guest is coming for a visit we make preparations because we want our guest to feel welcome and, honestly, we want to look like good, clean, organized, hospitable people in front of them.  We want to look like we have it together. 

 

And from John’s command to “make straight the way of the Lord.”  It sounds like our preparations should be no different for such an honored guest as Jesus Christ.  We should pick up a little bit.  We should make things straight, so that when Jesus comes he won’t have to constantly look at our mess or help us clean. 

 

But we immediately run into a problem when we have a guest of Jesus’ stature.  He is a different kind of guest than the guests we’re used to preparing for.  He knows what our apartments and homes look like before we clean them. 

 

He knows that most of the time the Laundry is sitting in the hamper, unwashed and unfolded.  He knows that the dishwasher stays full much longer then it should.   He knows that the floors could use a good vacuuming.  He knows that our coats aren’t usually hung up in a neat, orderly fashion in the closet, but instead can most often be found on the first chair closest to the front door where we throw them after coming home from work every day.   

 

So how do we prepare for Christ?  How do we prepare for this guest that knows us so well?  Do we simply make more of a habit of staying neat?  Instead of making sure we’re clean a few days before He shows up should we keep our homes and ourselves constantly clean?  Do we prepare ourselves by making sure we have all of our ducks in a row… by making sure that we are always doing the right thing, saying the right thing, being the right person?  Since we don’t know when Jesus is coming, we do not have the luxury of cleaning ourselves up an hour or two before he shows up and calling it good.  Instead, it seems that we need to remain perpetually clean because He could show up unannounced at anytime or at any minute. 

 

Well, we could prepare for Christ in this way.    It would be very easy to conclude that the Son of God would want to meet well-dressed hosts when He comes to the door.  Its easy to assume that He would like to walk on scrubbed hard-wood floors and eat off of your best China dinnerware.  It would be easy to assume that He would want to place Himself into lives that have already been made perfect.  But if these are the types of preparations we make for Christ’s coming into our homes and into our lives, I wonder if we know our guest as well as we think? 

 

If we’re constantly trying to perfect ourselves for Christ when he comes, I wonder if we are focusing on the wrong thing.  Are we aware that He wants to be there in the messes of our lives… when we’re fighting with our family members, or when we’re cutting corners on our tax returns, or (in my case) when I’m lying about the size of the fish that I catch.

 

So what does it mean to “Make straight the way for the Lord?”  What does it mean to prepare for Christ’s coming if it doesn’t mean to make ourselves neat and clean?   

 

We prepare and make straight the way not by cleaning ourselves up, but by opening ourselves up.  In other words, we do not keep our doors closed until we have our lives in order and then open them up for Christ so that He may come in and enjoy the perfect place that we have prepared for Him.  As I mentioned earlier, Christ knows what your life looks like before he gets there.  He knows that sometimes its clean and sometimes its.  And he knows what you look like before he gets there.  He knows that sometimes you’re clean, and sometimes you’re dirty.  For this reason, we do not prepare ourselves for Christ by cleaning ourselves up.  Instead, we open ourselves up and let Him see our messy lives. 

 

When we are focused on perfecting ourselves for a God who expects perfection it becomes easy to identify ourselves based on the things that we do.  In other words, if we do something wrong, we identify ourselves as bad people; if we do something right we identify ourselves as good people.  When we are focused on opening ourselves up for a God who came to give Himself to the imperfect we get an opportunity to identify ourselves according to God’s standards.

 

And just what is God’s standard by which we should identify ourselves, by which we should know who we are?  This can easily be seen simply by looking at the Cross.  Apparently God considered you valuable enough to give his only Son.  God has claimed you as His own, mess and all. 

 

And a funny thing happens when we have this faith that we are God’s own.  We become transformed by that faith.  We begin to clean ourselves, not in order to earn our place in God’s family, but as an expression of the joy and hope that we have from already being accepted as a part of His family.  In this way, the cleanliness that we constantly strive for in our lives is an expression of our God’s presence in our lives, not an attempt to gain His presence. 

 

 

In the act of giving His only Son, God has shown you that the messes of your lives do not make your lives what they are.  He has shown you that the messes of your lives do not make you who you are.  It is your relationship with Him that makes you who you are. 

 

And who are you? 

 

You are a beloved child of God.  Have faith in this.  Believe this.  Know this.  Making straight the way for the Lord does not begin by attempting to do better things or by attempting to be better people in the hopes that God will claim us.  It begins first by our trusting that God has claimed us as his own, messes and all; and it continues as we strive in word and in deed to give that same message to the rest of the world who needs to hear it as badly as we do. 

 

Let us Pray:  Father, It is natural for us to want to put our best foot forward for you.  Please open give us the strength to show you are worst foot as well. In Jesus’ Name we Pray, Amen.