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We had a special guest come to our office recently. The guest was a foreign ambassador, and we were honored by his presence. We knew he was coming two weeks in advance so we had time to get ready. We made plans for what we wanted to say and do and determined who was going to be responsible for what. We gave the office an extra special cleaning and put away all of the extraneous materials that had accumulated. We brought in a special tea service and a fruit and pastry tray so we would have something to offer. On the day of his visit, we all wore our "Sunday best." Finally, we were all on our best behavior before, during, and, most interestingly, even after his visit.

It's not often that any of us has someone of the stature of a foreign dignitary visit, but we follow a similar pattern when anyone visits even if we don't go to the same lengths that you do for an ambassador. We all clean up a bit and try to make the visit as pleasant as possible for both the guest and for ourselves.

If we take great pains to prepare for our Earthly visitors and treat them special, what about our heavenly visitors? We should be as least as concerned about them as we are our more prosaic guests. You've never had a heavenly visitor? You may have and you definitely will.

All of our faiths talk about the end times. Theologians call it eschatology. Whether we are Muslim or Christian or Jewish, we believe God will bring the present world to a conclusion by sending a visitor. In Judaism, it will be the long-awaited Messiah; in Islam and Christianity, it will be the return of Jesus. The details of what our faiths believe will happen vary, but all agree that there will be a judgment and that our eternal fates will be determined. With our eternal future hanging in the balance, it would behoove us to prepare for the coming of the Holy One. In Islam, our good deeds will be weighed against our bad deeds. In Judaism, our having followed of Torah will be the criterion. In Christianity, our relationship to God and to God's children will be the measure. Prepare right, and heaven awaits. Prepare wrong, and hell will be our destination.

The end time is when we definitely will have a heavenly visitor. How might we have a visitor? The scriptures tell us that we should care for the stranger because in so doing we may care for an angel without knowing it. Abraham, father of all three of our faiths, did and was blessed by God. The Christian faith takes it one step farther. In speaking about the end times, Jesus told His followers that they would be judged by how they cared for the hungry, the homeless, the sick, the thirsty, the needy, and the prisoner. Jesus said that in caring for those in need, we actually care for Him. He didn't say we would be caring for people like Him or that that our caring would be a metaphor for the purity of our hearts, He said that when we care for someone in need, we care for Him, period. Jesus, who the Christian faith says is God, inhabits those in need.

With the ambassador, my colleagues and I had to guess at what he wanted; with God, we have been told. Knowing what God is looking for, it is easier to get ready. Knowing what God is looking for, we have no excuse.

Dr. Benjamin G. Davis was executive director of the Religious Coalition for Emergency Human Needs in Frederick from 1996-99.