Reminders: False Alarm or Wake-Up Call

At 8:07 on the Saturday morning of January 13, 2018, over a million Hawaii residents and visitors received an emergency text message alert: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII.  SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER.  THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”  Panic ensued as people realized their lives could end in a matter of minutes.  For 38 minutes people huddled in whatever shelter they could find and prepared to die. 

The immediate fallout from the false alarm was anger and recrimination, but the best thing that came of it was that people realized that their lives could end at any moment, and that they need to be prepared.  Beyond that, it was a wake-up call to the government that they need better safeguards to prevent false alarms.  They also need to educate the public about what to do in case of a real attack.

We all need a wake-up call.  It doesn’t take a missile to end a life.  We all know of incidents and illnesses that have caused a sudden death.  We should all be prepared!  Not that we should live in constant anticipation of our imminent demise, but that we are aware of our mortality.  We need to not only be prepared to leave this life, but also ready to enter the next.  Not only that, but we need to help others understand their need to prepare. 

Sometimes it takes a death in the family to wake us up.  It reminds us that every life is terminal, including our own.  It might cause us to make some arrangements for our own death, in that we check to make sure our affairs are in order, including telling our next of kin where our important papers are.  That is a good thing, but more important is for us to check to make sure our religious affairs are in order, and tell our next of kin, and everyone else, where our faith is.  Our hope is that our lives will go on for many years, but our hope for eternal life is even more precious, and we need to share that with everyone we can, while we still can. 

The apostle Paul wrote: “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Philippians 1:21   We all need that kind of assurance.