Being ready all the time, that's what was driving me crazy. We were trying to sell our house and you had to be clean and ready all the time in case it was going to be showed. Our house had been on the market for a few months, and the market was slow. And I had to adjust. It was the first house we'd ever owned, so I really didn't know what selling your house involves. Well, let me tell you, it involves a lot of being clean and ready all the time. You never know when somebody's going to come look at the house. When the realtor might call and say, "Hey, here's a few minutes notice. Get out of the house. I'm bringing somebody by to take a look at it." Or worse, when you might have missed the call and folks walk into your home when you're taking a nap. That's not a good sales technique.

So you have to have your home always clean and ready. Inspect every part of the house, every day. And after a week or two, it gets kind of annoying trying to be clean and ready all the time. To have the yard tidied up, the paint examined, the laundry picked up, the window shades open, the lights on. Without the pressure of a visit, I would never do that. Most of us wouldn't. We would go weeks, even months, without looking at the wood around the door or picking up laundry. Okay, well, I would, but not Anita. She would last less than a minute.

Anyway, without the pressure of a deadline, we either won't or don't get ready. Nobody wants to be embarrassed when the guest arrives. That's what happened to Scrooge, isn't it? He'd been living his life for years, and he had never inspected it once. In fact, he didn't even want to inspect it. Had all kinds of grossness built up, cobwebs of greed. He ran into them and got trapped in them everywhere he went.

The dust of selfishness on every piece of his life built up so that it covered everything. His disdain and his disregard for the little children and for weak persons around him were like chip paint in every room of the house, unseemly and hard to look at Scrooge. Scrooge had leaves of anger falling in every corner of his yard. Anger just blew around everywhere that he walked. Greed, selfishness, lack of compassion, and anger. Scrooge had let them all grow up for years. It was normal to him. His was an ugly, ugly life. And he was miserable inside and out.

Miserable, that is, until the spirits arrived. No longer miserable, he was desperate. The ghost of Christmas past, the ghost of Christmas present, and the ghost of Christmas yet to come. Scrooge sees his life will end in a fiery, hellish finish, and he gets the point. When they arrived and showed Scrooge exactly what his uninspected life looked like, Scrooge had a wake-up call like only John the Baptist could deliver. I mean, John the Baptist was the ghost of Christmas for an entire nation. He delivered one big spiritual wake-up call to a spiritually slumbering nation. Israel knew that the next round of prophets would usher in the Messiah, the Savior, and so in walks John the Baptist to announce God's good news.

And he did it in a kind of strange way, with camel's hair clothes, with wild hair, leather belt around his waist, bulging eyes, booming voice, and a diet of locusts and wild honey. Preaching in a loud, shrill voice, "Repent! The kingdom of God is near, and your sins will be forgiven." John the Baptist was no lightweight. He demanded things. "Be who you say you are. Live what you preach. Your life should be producing fruit." And so the crowd asks him, "What should we do?" And John says the man with two tunics should share with him who has none. And the one who has food should do the same. In other words, live generously. Have compassion. Show grace. In other words, clean up your house. Because the king is coming. A guest. And his name is Jesus. And nobody wants to be embarrassed when the guest arrives.

Scrooge got the message, didn't he? When the ghost came and gave him his wake-up call, he got it. Repent. The time for change is right now. You have neglected your soul too long. Repent. Repent. To feel sorrow for one's sins, to reform and to change. Scrooge got the message. How do we know? He made changes. That's the proof. He was no longer miserable. Now he was desperate, desperate to make the changes in his life before the guests arrived. There he is instructing the people around him, "Give, share, take care of people in need. Say here!" Sounds an awful lot like John the Baptist, doesn't it Scrooge.

One man said, "Two of the ways you will know you're on the right path. First, you will see real change in your life. Two, you will live a life of continual repentance. You will continually be looking to clean up your life. Learning to give and to live generously instead of being stingy and selfish. Learning to treat others with grace and compassion rather than judgmental and condescension. Learning to deal honestly with other people even when it means you lose the deal or the opportunity. It's called integrity."

Advent: The Church remembers John the Baptist, who tells us it's time to inspect our houses, our lives. It's time to clean up, to say I'm sorry to God, to repent, and to make changes because the king, the heavenly guest, is coming. And you can't receive the king until you take time to clean up.