Summary: About five years ago, I visited for the first time the home of a family that would come to mean a great deal to my life and ministry. On this visit, as often happens on first visits, the family wanted to give me a tour of their home. The patriarch of the family, I will call him Steve, walked the shiny hardwood floors of the downstairs showing me the living room and dining room and kitchen. Then we climbed the carpeted stairs to the second floor. He showed me the bedrooms and told me that if I ever needed a place to rest, I was more than welcome to stay with his family. As we were making our way back downstairs, we stopped at a small door in the middle of the upstairs hallway. When we had passed it earlier, I had assumed that it was a crawl space, probably a place to store files or Christmas decorations. The door was no more than three feet tall by three feet wide, and when Steve opened it, I was shocked. Inside this little room was what appeared to be a truck load of non-perishable food items. There were bags of rice and cans of vegetables that were categorized by expiration date. It was really amazing. I turned to Steve a little confused and said, "No offense, but this is a weird place to have a pantry." He let out a chuckle and said, "This isn't our pantry, David. This is our prep room." It turns out that Steve was a "prepper." Now, I was thirty years old at the time of my visit to Steve's home; and to that point, I had never heard the term "prepper." It was so interesting to me, and if you've been paying attention to American culture over the last several years, you've probably heard the term prepper. It actually has a much longer history than that, but that's a story for another day. Prepper refers to a person or group of people who are taking steps to prepare in case a disaster happens in the world, whether natural or financial or political.
