Topic: Are You Ready For Anything? – Daily Devotional by Proverbs 31 Ministries 28 July 2020

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Are You Ready For Anything?

JULY 28, 2020

“The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.” Proverbs 27:12 (NIV)

Nothing in Northern California will cause your heart to beat faster than the word “Fire!” being yelled into your home.

So when I heard pounding on my front door and a voice I didn’t recognize yelling “Fire!” into our townhouse, my brain shut down.

My husband Roger and I were working from home that day in separate rooms. As soon as we heard the call, I grabbed my cell phone. Roger toted our 38-pound puggle, Jake, down the stairs, and we ended up on the grass in front of our house, barefoot and in a panic.

The scene looked like an episode of Chicago Fire — two doors down, our neighbor’s house was engulfed in flames. Next door, the house filled with smoke. We were just one or two walls away from our house going up in flames as well.

As we stood on the grass without our wallets, car keys and shoes, a thought came to me. “Rog, Jeremy didn’t come home from school yet, did he?” I asked. Jeremy was our college son, and it was his first day of classes. I had no idea what his schedule was.

“No, we would have heard him …” Roger replied, and then he ran back into the house and straight up the stairs.

Less than a minute later, Roger came out the door with Jeremy sleepily bringing up the rear.

Roger would like it noted he ran into a burning building to save his child. But it’s pretty hard to get around the fact that, while leaving a burning building, we grabbed the dog but left the kid.

Do you live under the same illusion I did, pre-fire? That when an emergency comes up, you’ll automatically know what to do?

Or maybe you know you’re unprepared for an emergency, so it’s easier just to not think about it now?

I spent most of my life living between these two extremes — putting it out of my mind, hoping there just wouldn’t be an emergency, and vastly overestimating my ability to deal with a crisis if one should come up.

But leaving the house during a fire — without all the humans — quickly dispelled all my excuses for not being prepared.

In Proverbs, one who shows care and thought for the future is someone to be emulated: “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty” (Proverbs 27:12).

After realizing crises don’t happen only to other people — they can and will happen to me — I want to be a prudent person. That’s why I try to do something every day to prepare for emergencies and inconveniences. Bad stuff happens all the time — large-scale tragedies like hurricanes, wildfires or global pandemics, and smaller-scale (yet no less devastating) disasters like a sudden health scare, job loss or a computer crash. But this doesn’t mean we have to live in constant fear.

Whether it’s mapping out next week’s dinners or doing emergency planning, I work every day to become someone who shows thought and care for the future.

I call this “taking care of my future self.” When I’m not constantly running behind, making excuses and overdrawing (not just in my bank account, but in my life), I can better take care of myself and the people I love during an emergency.

Heavenly Father, please grant me wisdom to know how to plan for the future, so I might be prepared for anything. Help me to be ready so I can also help others. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.