Are we prepared for the end?

I’ve been working on a different post, and am still continuing, but I decided to put together a few thoughts based on two events that happened yesterday.  You would think they aren’t related in any way, but in a way they are.

The first item, of course is the most recent version of ‘the end is near’.  Unfortunately, this is not a unique or recent phenomenon.  It has gotten to the point, in my mind, of ‘the boy who cried wolf’.  People keep coming up with these amazing calculations to determine the actual date and time of the end of the world, and then broadcasting it to anyone in earshot (not necessarily anyone who will listen).  I’m not going to waste your time or my time to explain why this person’s wrong.  If you’re reading this, it’s blindingly obvious he was wrong. 

The second item, was the death of a person who, at least to a fair portion of the population, was very well known and popular:  Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage.  Yes, once upon a time, I did watch professional wrestling, but it was with the critical eye that said, ‘it’s not real, I know it’s an act, so I’m going to enjoy the show’, and I do remember watching him perform over a number of years.  The details of his death have been documented in the news:  he was driving in his car with his wife (married about 1 year) when he had a heart attack and crashed (yes I’m summarizing).  Since he was in his car driving, there was no indication or warning of what was about to happen.

I use ‘the boy who cried wolf’ analogy because it has dulled most everyone’s senses to the danger.  It’s not necessarily what you think.  I’m not going to start telling you that the world is going to end, and when it’s going to end.  But there is something that we are supposed to be doing:  we need to be preparing ourselves for the time when we will ‘fall asleep in blessed expectation of the resurrection’.  The constant ‘the end is near’ hysteria has caused quite a number of us to blow off the underlying message that at any time we may find ourselves before God and our life was spent in idleness instead of repentance.