I did not do the Boy Scouts. Nor would I recommend it now: it is placing your sons in the path of the chickenhawk. Nut I learned to be prepared.

Not that this is new teaching. Jesus basically uses it as a metaphor: it would have been axiomatic to have more oil when you did not know when the bridegroom would arrive and your job was to light the way to the bride: we will leave to the social historians to make up wedding rituals from Christ using something well understood in Roman Palestine.

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

(Matthew 25:1-13 ESV)

So what does it mean to be prepared? On the physical it is fairly obvious: I live in a land that is geologically unstable[1] and in the South of that land, where it can snow in any month of the year. You have to be fit enough to survive. You need food in the house. You need two ways to prepare food: and you need ways to stay warm.

So far, obvious. The disciplines this entails are implied. And that is where we need to go.

We need to be prepared spiritually. We need to keep short accounts on our sins: confessing and returning to Christ. We cannot assume that tomorrow will be there: even if you live in a place without a risk of terror (if such a place truly exists) you could die in traffic today or from your horse falling over.

We do not know the day or hour for ourselves. Nor do we know the time that Christ will retuen. We know but one thing: it will be a shock. Pray that it is not the beginning of greater shocks.

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1. Technically, I live on a caldera: Dunedin is a based around a drowned volcano. The alternative lis living on land below sea level protected by dunes that shrunk by a third in the storms of winter. Or on the plains behind Dunedin, which flood most years.