Are you ready?

For anyone my age (82), it no longer feels like it did when I was 20 when anticipation of things to come revolved around marriage, children, adventures, and success in whatever career I chose. 

 

I remember when I was in India doing mission work, I spent the night in a certain city with a young girl in college. When I got the chance, I asked her about her chosen career.  She wanted to be a successful lawyer. “But what if the Lord returns before you finish your education?” I asked.  “Oh no, that won’t happen!”” she answered me.  She was convinced her plans would not be interrupted  until she was old and had completed all the things she desired.  I then reminder her: “But haven’t you thought that whenever Jesus returned, little children,or babies just born, would not live out their lives here on earth, but be received into heaven to ever be with the Lord?” 

 

From the expression on her face she hadn’t given it any thought at all. 

 

Unfortunately, most Christians live daily without considering God’s plans, nor do they consistently read the Bible and pray.  An occasional church attendance might take place---provided there is not some other reason to spend their time. 

 

Time.

 

Yes; time.  How fast it went by.  I was born during the Depression to a poor family. We had to live with grandparents on a farm

outside of Fort Smith, Arkansas, along with other cousins and out-of-work uncles and aunts.  We slept on the floor, played under the porch, and ate a lot of the peanuts my grandfather raised, along with an occasional squirrel someone shot out in the woods. When my father got killed trying to shoot one of them and my mother died of a coat-hanger abortion, suddenly I was an orphan, taken down to Texas to be adopted by a childless couple.

 

I still have a part of that 12x18”cardboard suitcase I carried to Texas which held my only possessions: The handle.  A totally new enviornment—an acutal bed to sleep on, and shoes to wear!  For the first time in my 4 years of living, I had a real home and all the changes that went with it!  I was in heaven, for sure!

 

Change.

 

I didn’t really think much about death, except that it took my parents away.  After being taken to church awhile, I soon saw what funerals were about...mostly for the elderly. But when my best friend drowned at age 6, I experienced what it feels like inside to lose someone you care about. Not pleasant at all. 

 

It wasn’t  long before death became an every day subject. I had spent my 10 cents in the local movie theater when screams were heard and people rushed outside. Pearl Harbor had been attacked.  Pearl Harbor? Where was that? Soon houses had little flags in their windows, showing they had a loved one fighting WWII.  Our little town of 2500 had a newspaper that kept up with it, and I noticed there were usually three pictures of local boys who died that week.  This went on for 4 years.

 

So you can see I grew up fast. And change after change intensified the way we lived. After the war, I ate my first hamburger at a MacDonalds, which had a sign outside boasting they had sold over 100,000 of them!  My dad bought our first automobile, trading in the old modelA Ford. This “car” would start without him breaking his arm giving the starter a wind up, and he didn’t need to shift gears anymore...it was an automatic! He actually gave his friends a demonstration by driving the up our local hill.

 

Experiences...both good and bad.

 

Always looking ahead at what was to come next.  And learning that what I did could determine the good and the bad to come.

I loved my Sunday School days, church camps in the summers, living in a peaceful  little town where everyone knew one another...Christmas pagents, carol singings, bike rides with my friends out in the countryside.  Nothing to fear in those days—the wars were over, everyone getting on with life in a big way.  Live..live...live!!  Yet in all the years that flew by, in the back of

my mind was the  thought about the dreadful day to come when it would end.  What then?  Except that assurances of heaven kind of lay like a comforting blanket on the subject, and I mostly left it there.  I had “joined the church, got baptized, and went my way to enjoy what years I have left.  I got an education, married, raised children, travelled the world.

 

But  now,one which is totally changed from my childhood.

 

Now...

 

My thoughts focus quite a bit on what’s to come. Because the descriptions of the time I am living in now are given in the Bible.

And at this point, I am LOOKING FORWARD WITH ANTICIPATION!  Study and prayer have come together to produce in my spirit that we are at the last of the church age, and it is quite possible it could all happen in the twinkling of an eye that Jesus will

split apart the heavens and take His own out of this sinful, cruel world before it shifts into a era of Tribulation like nothing that has ever happened before.

 

If this is too far-fetched for you, then dismiss what I am writing to you and go on your way.  But if you are wondering, I urge you to visit this preacher’s website and listen to his message:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pur2Z4xofRg

 

Because you are all so special to me, I am writing each of you this lettter. At 82, my chances of writing again get slimmer each day that goes by---but so do yours as well, no matter how old or young you may be.  We who love our Lord will only rise with him into the heavens. But take the time to do what I’m asking---it might be the most important thing you could ever do.

 

God bless all my precious friends...

 

Mary