BEING READY

“I’m ready, God, so ready, ready from head to toe.” -- Psalm 108:1

If I want to enjoy the benefits of living in a spiritual universe, I have to be ready – really ready. As one dictionary puts it, I have to be “prepared and available for service or action.” At each moment of my life, today and every day, the spiritual universe offers me miraculous manifestations of goodness, but I won’t even notice them if I’m not ready. The joys of life will pass me by like beautiful scenes pass by a blind person. The word “ready” also has another meaning – “prompt in apprehending or reacting.” This is the meaning we intend when we say someone has a “ready intelligence”, or that a person has made a “ready response”. There must be no hesitation between my experience of something and my understanding that this experience is a gift from the Universe expressly for me. I must be so alert, so ready, that each moment appears to me as an absolute miracle. Of course, this kind of readiness is not easy to accomplish. Like the EMTs who spend years honing their readiness to respond to an emergency, I must constantly train myself to respond to God’s steady infusion of gifts. When I wake in the morning, I should say, “OK, Ham, this is another day of unexpected and amazing gifts. Are you ready?” My response, I hope, will be an enthusiastic “Yes”.