Today’s offering on the “Musical Advent Calendar” is an improvisation on the spiritual “I Want to be Ready”. The text is loosely based on descriptions of the New Jerusalem, the Heavenly City, as shown to St. John the Divine and described in the Book of Revelations. The text can be found in the UMC Hymnal at #722, but an excerpt is below:
“I want to be ready,
I want to be ready,
I want to be ready
to walk in Jerusalem just like John.
1. O John, O John, what did you say?
(chorus:) Walk in Jerusalem just like John!
That you’d be there on judgment day.
(chorus:) Walk in Jerusalem just like John!
I want to be ready…
2. John said the city was just foursquare.
Walk in Jerusalem just like John!
And he declared he’d meet me there.
Walk in Jerusalem just like John.
(Refrain)
I want to be ready…”
While it might seem strange to reflect on eternity and the End Times in a season when we await the birth of the Baby Jesus, it is important to recall that Christ’s first coming was a prefiguration of his second coming when he will descend from on high, “coming with the clouds” (Rev. 1:7). So, in the words of our Lord recorded in Luke 21:36, let us “be always on the watch, and pray that…[we] may be able to stand before the Son of Man” when he comes again.
I want be ready to walk in Jerusalem, just like John.