I had an uncle who drove a big car which had a big trunk.  There was always a lot of stuff in that big trunk, but the thing all of my siblings and I thought was the funniest thing to have in the trunk was an axe.  Hold that thought for a second.

Last week, the SpaceX ship “Dragon Endeavour” returned to Earth.  The darkness of the night sky was suddenly pierced by a spectacular fireball as the ship re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, traveling at a speed of about 17,000 mph.  The fireball was visible where I live, even though the ship itself was actually many miles away, over the Gulf of Mexico.  Just moments later, the ship safely splashed down near Pensacola.

What a moment!  What an amazing event to witness!  What a memory, burned into the brain, never to be forgotten!

Yeah, I guess so - for those lucky enough to have been looking up at the sky at that moment.

For the rest of us, myself sadly included in that number, all we have from that night are pictures and videos, and the excited stories of those who saw it as it happened.  Nice, sure.  But it’s just not the same thing as actually experiencing that moment live.  And what a shame that is for “space geeks” like me, people who love this kind of thing, people who watched the first lunar landing in fuzzy black and white, people who followed NASA through decades of launches and splash-downs and triumphs and tragedies, people who search the night sky for meteors and the International Space Station, and even people who “travel” throughout space in their imaginations – reading Asimov and Clarke, “serving” with Captain Kirk or Picard, celebrating May the fourth.   

Perhaps you have already figured out where this little tale is going.         

Ask anyone who actually saw the re-entry of “Dragon Endeavour” live last week.  [And I know we have some of these lucky people in our church!]  Ask them to tell you how lucky they were to see this event as it happened.   

Their answer is going to be [and with apologies to Tina Turner], “What’s luck got to do, got to do with it?” 

Luck had nothing to do with it.  Instead, they saw this event because they planned to see it.  They prepared to see it.  And they were ready.  They had already made calculations of timing and location and viewing equipment.  They did not wait for the last moment to make their way to the viewing location.  They made sure they were present, in the proper location, with the proper equipment, long before the ship was scheduled to appear.  Thus, even unexpected delays in traffic, or any other type of unanticipated problems, would not prevent them from being ready when the moment occurred.

I missed seeing a spectacular sight – a sight especially wonderful for a “space geek” like me – because I wasn’t prepared, because I wasn’t ready. 

Don’t you love being around people who are prepared?  People who are ready?  People who are not caught off guard or taken by surprise?  Jesus says He will not even know people who aren’t prepared for His return, who aren’t alert, who aren’t ready.  Matthew 25:1-13. 

Remember my uncle with the axe in his trunk?  He used to say that you never knew when you might wish you had an axe in your trunk; and if that day ever came, he was going to be prepared, he was going to be ready.

Are you ready?

Ambrose Ramsey | Shepherd