Prepare but always expect a surprise

I SAW the film 2012 for the first time the other day. Great special effects, but it turns out that the film is really a take of the ancient story of Noah and the ark.

You can find the original in Genesis chapters 6-9 and it's a great story, worth a read.

In the Christian Calendar we have just begun the season of Advent. This is all about preparation.

At the moment we are preparing for Christmas, buying presents and arranging meals, planning visits to relatives and all the other stuff that Christmas involves.

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For Christians, Advent is also a time to remember that at 'the last day', Jesus will return in Judgement. Often that is seen in the kind of destructive apocalypse represented in the film '2012', but in practice we don't know what 'the last day' might look like. However, it reminds us that nothing lasts for ever and that even the Earth will someday come to an end. There are plenty of disaster movies, including 2012, to keep that possibility in view.

If your diary is anything like mine then it is full of appointments, events and plans which tell us what we will be doing in the future. The truth is though that we don't even know what will happen this afternoon. All sorts of things can alter our plans. Someone else can change them, or we could get sick, or even be involved in a tragedy. We never really know what will happen next.

So, in Advent, Christians remind themselves that it's good to be prepared, to keep clean accounts of our lives, to do what we can, every day, to live at peace with others and with God. Then, if our plans are severely interrupted, we will not be caught out with more regrets than we need to have.

Even if we aren't religious at all it's something we can do, to look at our relationships with others and simply ask the question, 'am I doing all I can to live peaceably with this person'. Working on that would be an excellent Advent preparation for the celebration of Christmas. You might, if you haven't already done so, also think about attending a Carol Service or some other Christmas Church Service, to remind yourself of what Christmas is actually about – God, born as the baby Jesus, to bring all who accept this mystery back to God.