Can you believe it? It’s December 24th and I’m not ready for Christmas! I haven’t finished my shopping – at least half the Christmas cards I wanted to send to family and friends are sitting on my desk – unaddressed; the presents I did manage to order online have arrived (think some of them are still missing but haven’t had time to check with Amazon!) but they have not been wrapped, as yet. I still need to do some grocery shopping because although I have the turkey in the fridge, I have purchased nothing for dessert and the Brussel sprouts (yuck!) are missing.
Sound familiar?? Hopefully not! Because it isn’t that Christmas arrives unexpectedly each year – as far as I can remember, every calendar highlights Anglo-Saxon Christmas as arriving on December 25th. But sometimes we get distracted with life and forget to plan ahead – to go shopping in October or November ahead of the crowded shopping malls and non- existent inventory; to get the house decorated early to meet the festive occasion; to plan our Holiday menu and purchase the necessary ingredients.
But what about other significant events in our lives? What if we were to be struck with COVID and horror of horrors, find ourselves on a ventilator fighting for our life? What if we almost got wiped out in the snowstorm last Monday and found ourselves in the hospital with serious injuries after they dragged us out of a crumpled mess of an SUV in the ditch? What if the lump we feel in our body is indicative of a terminal cancer? What if???? Are we ready to face eternity? Death doesn’t have the certainty of Christmas – it can arrive unannounced and unexpected. Proverbs 27:1 reads “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring” ESV and for the thousands of people who have died as a result of the current pandemic, their message to us would be – GET PREPARED – because they certainly didn’t have such an outcome planned on their calendar in January 2020!
What happens after we breathe our last? Where will we be one second after we die? God’s Word, the Bible says in Hebrews 9:27 “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” ESV. We ask the question – where will you spend eternity? And there are only two options – heaven or hell. Why delay this decision to a more convenient time? In 2 Corinthians 6:2 we read “Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” ESV There is not one of us who has any certainty we will see 2021 – either January or December. What if death were to come calling today? Have you trusted Christ as your Saviour? Have you realized and accepted that Jesus Christ paid the price for, and endured the penalty of, our sins when He died on Calvary’s cross?
Being unprepared for Christmas may be embarrassing, but it does not have same consequences as being unprepared for eternity. If you do not know Jesus as your Saviour and Lord, you cannot know true peace and joy, either in this life or in the life to come. Instead of great joy, you will experience “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Luke 13:25-28) in hell. Our eternal destiny depends on whether or not we put our trust in Him as our personal Saviour while we are still alive. And who knows how long they will live?