“Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen” (Zechariah 11:2)

In the Bible, the cedars of Lebanon were symbols of pride, strength, durability and permanence. God tells people who aren’t prepared to die, “your time is up”. Christians should live as if Christ could return at any moment.

So how can we be ready? “Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life” (Luke 21:34). “Walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts” (Romans 13:13–14).

The person who doesn’t prepare for death is a fool. Christ told the parable of the rich man who built bigger barns for his material wealth while neglecting his eternal soul. “God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:20–21).

Be ready to die at any moment. “You do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’ But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin” (James 4:14–17).

Be ready for judgement. “Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Corinthians 5:9–11).

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