December 2025: Be Ready!

A blessed December to you and yours as we fully immerse ourselves in the Holiday Season, I pray you and your families had a blessed Thanksgiving and stay safe (and warm) this December.

With the last day of November came the beginning of our Advent season. Advent is an exciting time when we await the celebration of Christmas but also prepare ourselves for the Second Coming of Christ. None of us love to be in the dark – sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively. We would all like to know what is coming. But sometimes we just don’t have the information that we want to have.

For example, the last weekend of November came with the prediction of a lot of snow. I had planned a few months back to drive to St. Louis to celebrate Thanksgiving with my fiancée’s family, but the snow would bring a challenge to my plan to drive home on Saturday. There were various factors that could mean that driving home on Saturday would be an option, but in preparation for the worst, I decided to drive home Friday night instead (after just getting there Thursday afternoon. It was a bummer, but the wise prepare.

How can we prepare for Jesus’ coming? Jesus says in Matthew 24 that no one knows the day or the hour when the world will end. He compares its coming to the coming of the flood, when many were taken unaware. He tells us to always be prepared for the end. This is true for the end of the world – Christ’s Second coming – as well as our own deaths.

Some prepare by trying to read too much into Scripture. Many use this verse, and a few others, to prepare by talking about an event that is referred to as the Rapture – a time when Christians will be “taken up” and leave those who don’t follow Christ behind (see the “Left Behind” series). In the LCMS, we see these texts as speaking differently. Rev. Dr. Reed Lessing points out that Jesus is comparing those swept away in the flood to those taken away in Matt. 24, so it doesn’t make sense that this would be referring to Christians taken and unbelievers “left behind” (If you want to speak more about the Rapture, come talk to me!). Others try to predict when Jesus is coming, but Jesus is clear that no one knows the day or hour when it will come. We will know it’s here when it arrives.

So, how do we prepare? The bad news is that we cannot do anything ourselves to be ready for the end to come. We just won’t be ready. The good news is that we have already been prepared for the end to come. Through our Baptism, our joining in Holy Communion, and hearing of God’s Word we have been prepared by Christ for his Second Coming. The only way to be prepared is to continue in these things that God ahs given to us by the Holy Spirit as gifts. These things are the only things that prepare our hearts and minds for Jesus’ Second Coming. In Christ, we have been prepared. And though we may be surprised at the coming end, we won’t be caught unprepared. He’s made sure of that.