.....ready

Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. 1 Corinthians 16:13

How many people actually listen to the safety demonstration on an airplane? Nobody thinks that their plane is actually going to be involved in a crash. Besides, if you fly very often, you've heard the same spiel dozens of times. It almost seems like a waste of time.

Everybody knows how to fasten and unfasten their seatbelt, right? That seems like a pointless part of the demonstration. Maybe not; a study by the British Civil Aviation Authority revealed that an average of 6% of passengers get delayed by seatbelt problems during an evacuation.

Every safety demonstration discusses what to do if the plane has to make a water landing, but in the 2009 U.S. Airways landing on the Hudson River, only about half took a seat cushion for floatation and only 10 of 150 passengers thought to grab a life jacket. They'd heard the briefing, but hadn't really listened.

Experts say that even a half-second delay in an emergency can mean the difference between life and death, yet few of us pay attention to the very information that can save our lives. We don't value the information until we really need it.

I can't help but feel that we treat God the same way. We're vaguely aware that He's there; we know that we really ought to learn more about Him, but we don't take the trouble to do so... until we find ourselves in an emergency.

Then we wish we knew Him better. We wish we knew more about how to pray. We wish we were more confident about knowing what He expects of us and how we should behave towards Him.

Don't wait until that crisis hits. Take the time to learn about God now. Connect with people who know Him and can guide you. Learn the basics about Bible study, and then make reading the Bible a part of your daily routine. Start talking to God on a regular basis. There's no better way to learn about prayer than by doing it.

Connecting with God is easier than inflating a life vest or opening an emergency exit on a plane. And the rescue He offers lasts forever.

-tim archer