Preparation for meeting God – Charles Spurgeon

“PREPARE to meet your God.” Why, methinks there are no more joyous words under Heaven than those under some aspects, certainly none more solemn out of Hell under others. “Prepare to meet your God.” These words may have sounded through the green alleys of Paradise, and have caused no discord there. Blending with the sweet song of new created birds, these notes would have but given emphasis to the harmony. Often from the mossy couch whereon he reclined in the happy life of his innocence and bliss, the great sire of men would be aroused by this holy summons. When the sun first scattered the shades of darkness, and began to gild the tops of the snow-clad hills with morning light, Adam was awakened by the birds amid the groves of Eden, whose earliest song his heart interpreted, as meaning, “Awake, O wondrous man, and prepare to meet your God.” Then climbing some verdant hill from whence he looked down upon the landscape, all aglow with glory and with God, Adam would in holy rapture meet his God, and in lowly reverence would speak with him as a man speaks with his friend. Then, too, at eventide the dewdrops as they fell, each one would say to that blessed man, “Prepare to meet your God.” The lengthened shadows would silently give forth the selfsame message, and perhaps it is no imagination, angels would alight upon lawns besprent with lilies, and pause where Adam stood pruning the growth of some too luxuriant vine, and would with courteous speech remind him that the day’s work was over, for the sun was descending to the western sea, and it was time for the favored creature to have audience with his God. The faintest intimation would suffice for our first parent, for the crown of Paradise to him was the presence of the Lord God; and Eden’s rivers, though they flowed over sands of gold, had no river in them equal to the stream whereby the spirit of Adam was gladdened when he had communion with the Most High, for then he drank from that river of the water of life which flowed from underneath the throne of the Great Supreme. Unfallen man had no greater joy than walking with God. It was Heaven on earth to meet in converse tender and sublime with the great Father of Spirits. No marriage bells ever rang out a sweeter or more joyous melody than these glad words as they were heard amid the myrtle bowers and palm groves of Eden by our first parents in the heyday of their innocence, “Prepare to meet your God.” Then when Jehovah walked in the garden in the cool of the day, he had no need to say aloud, “Adam, where are you?” for his happy creature whom he had made to have dominion over all the works of his hands was waiting for him as a child waits for his father when the day’s work is done, watching to hear his father’s footfall, and to see his father’s face. Oh, yes! those were words in fullest harmony with Eden’s joys, “Prepare to meet your God.