Faith Venture

Jesus told a story of 10 young women invited to a wedding who were to watch for the groom to arrive. They were to welcome him with a lighted procession. Five were prepared with extra oil for their lamps just in case something happened. Five brought enough only for the normal waiting period.

Jesus described the first five as wise and the other five as foolish (lifting words and concepts directly from Proverbs).

We cannot know everything that will happen today while we are sitting in our meditation/reading chair in the morning. Let alone tomorrow or next week. But we can have a foundation of relationship with God and a supply of personal and family necessities just in case they may be needed.

Tech people talk about having a “grab bag” of chargers, batteries, cables, backup disk drives, and so forth just in case of fire or earthquake or something else unexpected where you have to run. This is another example of prepared.

When you have prepared yourself physically, mentally, and spiritually, you have laid a foundation for surviving whatever happens with as much peace as is possible.

When you are prepared and able to act with flexibility, then you don’t have to resort to justifying your actions later or constructing an alternate universe of “facts” to explain away your lack of preparation.

I was in Germany at the very outbreak (publicly) in China. I had a feeling that this could be very much like the stories my grandfather told of the Spanish flu (which had nothing to do with Spain) in 1918. Some of our leaders read the book describing public health reactions to that pandemic. They were prepared to act when Corona hit here.

It’s worse than I feared. But keeping in touch with God helps maintain equanimity. I strive to keep what routines that I can given a new house in a new community in a new state and a new way of interacting (or not) socially.

Now, if only I had thought to have some free weights around the house to complete the workout… then I would have been like the wise young women. Stay safe and healthy.

This entry was posted on March 30, 2020 at 7:26 am and is filed under Disciplines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.