Lately, as I’m wont to do every six months or so, I have been reviewing our emergency preparedness supplies. Naturally I find myself on some very interesting preparedness websites and blogs. I have even stumbled across some of the more radical survivalist resources. I was surprised to discover a couple of things. 1) There are people out there who really believe in the possibility of a zombie apocalypse. I’m not kidding! And 2) There are two ways of approaching emergency preparedness. On many of the survivalist sites I found a common thread; prepare yourself and your family, and be prepared to defend yourselves and your stuff because the unprepared might smell you cooking your carefully stored food and come and try to harm you for it. So grab your gun and don’t let him have any!  The other way of approaching emergency preparedness I found in talking to local emergency prep specialists (all of them Christian, specifically Mormon) and on Christian preparedness sites and forums.  This philosophy was that we need to prepare in such a way that we can not only provide for our families but our neighbors as well. I’m not making this up! One lady I talked to said that she has food storage to help out others in the neighborhood and a man at a preparedness store said that when he bought a water filter he paid more so he could get one large enough and fast enough to readily supply clean drinking water to his entire church congregation! It made me proud to be part of a community of people who believe that we are our brothers keepers.

Jesus said in Matthew 25 “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: “Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. … Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”