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Douglas Adams, a self-proclaimed “radical atheist,” wrote a series of books called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  I read several of them in English in, I think, the 9th grade until my teacher stopped giving me credit for reading them :). 

In the first book, a computer is built to determine the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.  After computing for 7 1/2 million years, the answer is “42”.  Unfortunately, the programmers then had to work on a program and computer to compute the question…

I‘m in the middle of teaching a series on Easter for my “Adult Bible Fellowship” class (Sunday School).  While praying about how my class should study Easter, I found that we could break our Easter lesson into four parts: Life, Sacrifice, Waiting and Resurrection. 

Tonight I’m wrapping up the “waiting” lesson.  We’ll look at Israel waiting for Messiah, the Disciples dealing with the death of Jesus (not understanding that he would be resurrected on the third day) and, finally, how Christians are called to watch for the “end of the age” when Jesus will return again.

In my study, I got to the end of my lesson where I sat staring at the class take-away – what are we supposed to learn from this lesson?  Why are we studying this?  What became perfectly clear to me was what I believe to be the question and answer to Adams’ riddle.  There’s nothing special to the question – it’s simply, “Why are we here?  What are we doing?”

Q: Why are we here?  What are we doing?

For those who believe that Jesus was the son of God, that he was sacrificed to atone for the sins of mankind, that he died and rose again defeating death and sin, the answer is found in Matthew 24 and 25: we’re here to prepare for the second-coming of Jesus.

When I sat reading Matthew 24 and 25 and I browsed through Mark, Luke and John looking for other parables and commands related to the end of the age and Jesus’ second-coming, I thought to myself, “I understand the meaning of life…”

I tweeted, “I've been studying and I've discovered the meaning of life; it has nothing to do with mice, dolphins, 42, happiness or feeling good” (mice, dolphins and 42 are all elements from Adams' Hitchhiker's series).

Shortly after my tweet – I chuckled that Adams was pretty close…  42 is half my answer, transposed and missing some important details.

If you believe that you require forgiveness for lying, cheating, stealing, etc, and you chose to claim Jesus’ death on the cross and subsequent resurrection as the way to get that forgiveness, the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything is Matthew 24-25: Prepare for Jesus’ return.

A: Prepare for Jesus’ return.