Are You Ready?

Studying the second coming of Christ this week. How should we be preparing? What should we be watching for? When will He come? Will I be ready, or will I have just procrastinated my repentance and righteousness? It brings to mind the primary song When He Comes Again, specifically the second verse:

I wonder, when He comes again,
Will I be ready there (and I actually always thought it said "then")
To look upon his loving face
And join with Him in prayer?

I think I'm pretty safe in saying that I have righteous intentions. I really want to teach my children the Gospel better and pray more often and be kinder to others... but am I really doing it? (Now we're back to principle of good, better, and best; it's good to have good intentions, but it's better to actually do them, and it's best to become the person who is just plain good.) Will I be the kind of person that actually does these things before He comes? Would I feel comfortable today joining the Savior in prayer? I'm afraid the answer is actually 'no.' How could I pray with the Savior when I haven't even mastered daily prayer?

So, how do we prepare beyond commandment keeping and righteous living? In the Joseph Smith Translation of Matthew and the Doctrine and Covenants we find a few verses of how to live in constant preparation:

D&C 87:8 "Stand ye in holy places and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come; for behold, it cometh quickly..." Go to the temple, make your home a temple, a sanctuary, strive to treat your body like a temple, a holy place.

JST Matthew 1:37 "And whoso treasureth up my word shall not be deceived, for the Son of Man shall come..." Study the scriptures. Study the actual doctrines and principles that Christ teaches to avoid deception by others.

JST Matthew 1:48, 50 "Therefore be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh. / Blessed is that servant whom his lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing..." Just do it. Just do what you are supposed to, because if you wait, it will most likely be too late. We won't be able to hop out of our chairs when we first hear the trumpets sound and act like we've been living righteously and repenting. We have to have been doing it.

D&C 33:17 "Wherefore, be faithful, praying always, having your lamps trimmed and burning, and oil with you, that you may be ready at the coming of the Bridegroom." (And while I was writing that sentence my daughter spilled a full glass of water all over the floor and I swore. This is obviously not meant to be a "I'm perfect, so let me preach to you" kind of thing ;) We all have things we are working on, we all have lamps to keep trimmed. By cutting out the bad and doing the good, we keep our lamps ready and drops of oil within reach for when we will need them to see the Coming of the Lord.

D&C 45:57 "They have taken the Holy Spirit for their guide, and have not been deceived..." In our study of the scriptures and doctrine, we need to make sure we are being led by the Holy Ghost in order to understand truth.

Even though no one knows exactly when Christ will come again, we have been giving things to look for. In Mark 13 we are taught about signs of the Second Coming which include, false Christs, wars and rumors of wars, nations rising against nations, earthquakes in divers places, famines and "troubles." And at the end of verse 9 it says, "these are the beginnings of sorrows." This is just the beginning; it will get worse. But I think we've all seen or heard about all of these signs already, so... any day now? If Christ were to come tomorrow, would I be ready? Nope. So I'd better wake up, "lest coming suddenly he find [me] sleeping" (v 36).

But I think there is hope. We've been given the tools and the ability, we just need to do it, and then there is hope. The rest of the second verse of the song goes:

Each day I'll to do his will
And let my light so shine
That others seeing me may seek
For greater light divine.
Then, when that blessed day is here,
He'll love me and he'll say,
"You've served me well, my little child;
Come unto my arms to stay."

It should be a blessed day that we look forward to, not one that we should fear. Christ will always love us, but how wonderful will that day be if we can look to Him and say, "I have loved you, too"?