Once Upon A Time

A guy met a girl, they fell in love, went out for periodic ice-creams and walks on the beach, and decided to get married.

Now, during those ice-creams and beach walks, they had plenty of time to discuss how their wedding ceremony would be done. The guy had brief visions of a vision of beauty in a pristine white dress walking up the aisle, and the girl was all for champagne at the reception. Both agreed that Mendelssohn's Wedding March was too old school.

Both girl and guy agreed that the hardest thing to do would be choosing whom to invite. See, they both came from different schools, went to different universities and over the years, had accumulated many different friendships all over the world. Asked to name 10 close friends, both of them would have only one difficulty; which 10 friends?

Plus their parents, being typical Chinese dudes, could invite a hallful of people in 10 seconds, no problem. Two hallfuls, cos there were 2 sides of parents.

But they agreed that something had to be done. So they reached a compromise.

The guy would invite 15 of his closest friends, and the girl would invite 15 of her bosom buddies to the wedding. They were all over the world, UK, Australia, Germany, China and one in New Zealand. All of them received their invites in good time (despite the ridiculous postal strike still ongoing in the UK) and did the usual fussing about what presents to get.

After all, they hadn't seen each other for a long time, even though they used to be close in high school and college. But everyone looked forward excitedly to the big day.

Since the wedding was in a private location in KL, all the friends flew over the day before, sort of a mini-reunion before the wedding itself. And as friends who haven't been back home in ages do, they went out to mamak. And to Luna Bar after that. And then to someone's house for a chat. And then out to mamak again. By the time all 30 friends said goodnight and went their separate ways, everyone was pretty tired.

Inevitably, next morning, groggy faces and hangovers were the theme of the day. But everyone remembered the BIG DAY. Church at 10! No messing around-get dressed-beat the KL jam-rush rush rush. And it so happened that about half the group of friends hadn't a clue where the place in KL was. Cos you know, they weren't from KL to begin with. So they got out their mobiles and tried calling the bridegroom. But, wouldn't you know it, they had misplaced the invitations to the wedding, on which the contact numbers of the bride and the groom were written. Then they decided to call each other. But in the rush, not many people were answering their mobiles. Some hadn't even gotten a Malaysia number yet. And some batteries were flat.

And so, just like in Matthew 25:1-13, those who were ready, got to party with the guy and the girl. They got to watch the long-awaited-for kiss, the irresistably 'chim' and romantic vows, and enjoy a great reception after.


Those who weren't ready, lets just say it wasn't the best day of their lives.

***

I think God has this tendency to catch me by surprise. Sometimes He does something I'm not expecting, and I just have to roll with it. Sometimes its ok, cos I'm still walking pretty closely to Him, so can pick up the signs here and there, and its not a total clueless surprise. But at other times, when I'm stuck in a rut, and God pops a stunner, I miss it. Mostly because I'm not ready.

Is there a way to live my life in that perpetual sense of readiness for God's move? What do you ppl think?