My mother always had silvermints and a hankie in her handbag. I’m not sure if they were for her solely because as a child, I was often given a mint sweet when I got restless in public places. It was just one of her many ways to be prepared and how she planned ahead. 

There’s a lot in life which takes planning and preparation. When it comes to holidays: tickets need to be booked in advance, the suncream packed and the passports checked. With the children: have you worked out who has which after school activity, when and where? Are the meals planned a week in advance? Are you or your children preparing for exams? Have you sorted out which clothes are in the ‘washed’ and ‘not washed’ pile because there’s someone who is going to come looking for it very shortly? And perhaps that’s all even before you go to work and plan there too! 

Fail to plan, plan to fail

A teacher expects pupils to be ready to listen. However, there’s much that happens to make children ready to listen. You need to get their attention, put away distracting items on the desk, feet on the floor, hands above the desk and eyes fixed on the teacher.

Firefighters have to be prepared to go at a moment’s notice. There’s no point in asking them to put out a fire when they don’t know where the hosepipe is, how the ladders work and how the breathing apparatus works. Likewise we don’t want to go into an operating theatre with medical professionals who aren’t prepared. We would much rather than time and energy had been spent in training and learning so that when the day does come, they’re ready to go. 

We do something similar with our children. When they reach the age for more independence, parents talk through the do’s and don’ts of staying safe and how to resist peer pressure. Why do we do this in advance? Why not just wait until something happens? Because we know that there are situations which will most likely arise and we want to prepare them for that.

We also prepare for all the happy life events in life: the prom, the wedding, the new baby, exam success, graduation. We get ready for all those things we know are going to happen with some degree of certainty. 

We aren’t the only ones preparing

Has it ever occurred to you that God is also a God who prepares? For the coming of His Son Jesus, He prepared a Jewish people, a lineage of kings from David onwards, prophets, a sacrificial system, a Passover lamb, a Roman census and even the crucifixion. He sent John the Baptist who literally was “a voice calling in the desert to prepare the way of the Lord.”

The reason I tell you this is because God is not finished preparing for the future and that includes our future. And those plans of His can give us hope. Jesus said to the disciples, “In my father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” 

We might prepare but we aren’t in control

So often our preparations must include what if’s. What if there’s a financial downturn? Or an illness? An accident? Exam results that don’t go the way we had hoped? In our modern western society, we can get insurance for: the house, the car, our health, and our pet. We can get salary protection or life assurance because even though we prepare for the future, we still know that life is uncertain no matter what.

God, however, is different from us. He prepared knowing with certainty what would happen. God provided an eternal future for us, with Him, through His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus is preparing a place for those who love Him, for those who believe and trust in His death on the cross for the forgiveness of their sins.

God put in place the events which led up to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, during a Roman census to a virgin named Mary, as fulfilment of prophecies which lasted throughout the Old Testament. This same God has put in place a future which He has prepared for all His people - including us - if we want it. This thought can give us a lot of consolation and hope, knowing that we have been so especially thought of. We are not anonymous in God's eyes and our plans and preparations are important to him, as well as us.

Answering the why for our Hope 

Being prepared to give an answer for the hope that lies within you can be daunting. It might seem like no one is really interested in their faith anymore. We are more likely to feel that we will be shot down as out of touch, intolerant or weird if we were to speak out about our faith. It can and does feel like that at times. But our way of life, as a Christian, should be so different that others are drawn to Christ because we honour Him above others. This is quite a tall order. Even just writing it out sounds impossible! This level of commitment and effort would be unattainable without the power of God at work in our lives. God’s Holy Spirit is the one who makes this possible. 

What are some practical ways we can ‘prepare’ to give others an answer for our hope?

• Spending some time reading the bible every day and getting to know our Lord helps us to see what He is doing in our lives.

• Pray and ask God to show you what to do and to put people in your path to help you. 

• Seek guidance and advice from those you can trust to help you in your spiritual life; make their advice your own and apply it to your life.

• Keep a notebook where you can jot down little inspirations and the things God is teaching you.

• Study! Even a little time spent everyday adds up so that you know your faith intellectually as well as with your heart.

At the right time all the preparations from the beginning of the world were put in place to complete God’s plan of salvation. That takes some thinking to get your head wrapped around all that. God is not a disorganised God who has to react to circumstances of people. In his foreknowledge He is completing His plan of history. 

And the preparation doesn’t end there. He is really and truly interested in our lives. And if God can organise history to complete the salvation of Jesus then it follows that God can also keep his promise to prepare a place for us. Something we can surely have hope in.