Are you prepared?!

Sunday morning: 9am. As the saying goes – the coast is clear – literally. Although a few trees fell and branches were strewn along the street in between the highrise apartment buildings in lower Manhattan, Irene’s expected damage was minimal. Surrounding us were hundreds of New Yorkers watching the repair effort…both surprised and relieved that God spared them, once again.

Just two days before, leaders from both New York and New Jersey urged residents from coastal areas to leave their homes and search for shelter. Only a few days prior, NYC felt the effects of a surprise earthquake, so New Yorkers were on their toes. Adding to that, in preparation for what would be the first “historic” storm to hit the tri-state area of NJ/NY/CT in many years, the MTA (Metro Transportation Authority) was unprecedentedly shut-down for over 24 hours. Due to the heavy financial loss alone, (that’s my theory) the MTA as-we-know-it, had never before been stopped for an extended period of time in preparation for any natural disaster. So it must’ve been a big deal.

By friday afternoon, grocery stores were literally sold-out and the shelves were completely emptied as lines of people waited to buy canned foods and bottles of water. Manhattan was prepared for the worst of the worst. Like with any expected event, there were the skeptics who doubted the potential damages of Irene, but overall, most people expected something big to happen.

As Cristina and I grabbed a few last-minute supplies on the way home from work Friday, we asked the rushed crowds of people that we ran in to,  “Are you prepared?!” and most simply shrugged their shoulders.

I started thinking about what could potentially happen….extended power-outages, flooding, rioting and looting?!?!….a real chaotic situation. Were we ready if, God forbid, it turned into that? (Trust me, I didn’t really expect looting, but then again, I don’t think those in New Orleans did either!) I jokingly thought to myself – “Where are those end-of-the-world street-preachers this time?”

In the end, praise God, nothing catastrophic happened here in Manhattan. But, it did wake a lot of us up. Maybe, I thought to myself, maybe God was using it to wake those of us up who have become lazy in our mission.

Sometimes we get too comfortable in life with the blessings we’ve been given. We forget to live as the first Christians lived in Acts of the Apostles, helping and providing for one another. You see, they had a profound understanding of the urgency of Christ’s return in their time….they lived each Mass with that urgency in their hearts, repenting for their sins (i.e. public repentance and things of that sort) in the same way. They were constantly aware of the danger of becoming too comfortable in this world….or of forgetting about the eternal life that awaited them.

God is calling us to literally live each moment as if we were “ready to go”. Our call is to seek and strive for holiness, living in Grace and not in sin. Obviously, one might go crazy if all they think about is death – walking around obsessed and over-scrupulous, eventually becoming a slave to fear- which is why God helps us mature in our walk with Him. Our daily work is in constantly preparing ourselves and in bringing the Good News to others around us,  for the moment in which each of us will meet Him is unknown. Still, stop for one moment and think about this….the thought alone of our ultimate goal should bring us great Joy!

As much as we find ourselves constantly walking a tightrope of being IN this world yet not OF it, the Call to be instruments in Christ transforming this culture is ever before us. It’s becoming clearer each day as I pray about all that is going on in this country and around the world. Christ’s desires to “wake up” all those who are sleeping.

Maybe the threat of this storm wasn’t so bad after all….maybe God used it to alert us for what is to come. Maybe the reason that the media got so “hyped” about this storm was because people are constantly searching for something that might wake us up or “shake things up” a bit….

Let me also say that while I would never wish or hope or desire any disaster upon anyone, I can’t help but think that something that would drastically change life as-we-know-it (shaking things up a little) could be good for us….

What do you think?

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