We are expected to live wise lives making the most of every opportunity because time is short. Therefore live for the right priorities. Grab that cup of coffee and let's start the day off on the right foot.
A Modern Violence
Today's Devotional Thought:
Ephesians 5:15-16: "Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil."
I remember as a young boy being examined by a Doctor. He had a stethoscope. Lifting my shirt he put its cold metal to my chest and I looked on in obvious fascination. The Doctor perceiving my interest let me listen. Ker-chunk, ker-chunk. There is something profound in hearing your own heartbeat, even for a little boy. Now as a middle-aged man I still remember that ker-chunk, ker-chunk. It has stayed with me all my life because in a very primal way it is my life. There is a number of ker-chunks that I get and I will get no less and no more. There is only One who knows my number, God, and when my number is up I will find myself standing before Him to give an account of what I did with those ker-chunks. The Bible says, "Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment..." (Hebrews 9:27).
It may be a morbid thought but it is the motivation that undergirds a well-lived life. For the "days are evil," and we must redeem the time for good. Everyone who has ever lived to do great things for Christ, to become something great for God, lived with the sense of their limited ker-chunks. Not that the work is all ours but neither is it not ours. If life is a boat some view life as a row boat where they must do all the work to get ahead. They live life under their own power and always come up short. Others view life like a cruise ship where they do none of the work and God does everything. They love Ephesians 2:8-9, that salvation is a gift from God, not by works, but they stop reading before they get to verse 10, "For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." So, life is neither a row boat or a cruise ship but rather like a sail ship. It is up to us to raise the sails but it is the power of God's wind that moves us forward.
The well-lived life is a life lived under God's power but also lived wisely. It was Thomas Merton, writing in the 1960's, who described his day as a form of violence. He said, "There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence. The rush and pressures of modern life are a form of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, to succumb to violence ... The frenzy of the activist ... destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful." [Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Image, 1968), page 81]. This was written well before iPhones, the Internet, Facebook, personal computers, and the proliferation of TVs. Merton may have been underestimating the rush and pressure and "innate violence" of our age.
The wisdom then is a wisdom of priorities. Consider Japan. Japan will host the 2020 Summer Olympics. Ironically their initial designs for the National Stadium did not include a place for the Olympic flame. Such a glaring oversight further affirms what the late Stephen Covey (1932-2012) wisely wrote, "The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities." [Time, 3/28/16, p.74; Primary Greatness, Stephen Covey, 2015, p.74] We must be wise not only in what we choose to do but also what we choose not to do.
Ker-chunk, ker-chunk. What will you do today? Ker-chunk, ker-chunk. It's time to raise the sail and see where God will take us.
Prayer: Holy Father, You who know the exact number of our ker-chunks. Our lives are Your gift to us. What we do with them is our gift to You. May You be pleased in how we raise our sails. May You fill those sails with Your power so we can redeem the time You give us. For Your glory, we live and we pray, in Jesus name, amen.
Turn to God...
Today's thought:
Mark 1:35-37, "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: "Everyone is looking for you!"
The people are coming to Jesus in droves. He is healing the sick, the diseased, the disfigured. His ministry is in full force. There is more to do than hours in the day. A huge amount of pressure weighs upon him but this is what he has come to do, has left the glories of heaven and the presence of the Father to do. There are miles ahead of him that day. There are hoards of people to deal with that day.
And yet, while it was still dark, he gets up, sneaks away to a solitary place alone, and prays to His Father. This was Jesus pattern. When the heat was on, when the pressure was mounting, when the schedule was insane, when his life was dripping with stress, Jesus priority was time alone with God. He, when he was under the greatest pressures, turned to the Father knowing that God would give strength and peace to achieve all that was on the agenda.
Robert C. McFarlane was a well-known businessman in the Los Angeles area. He moved to California from Oklahoma in 1970, and within just a few days of his arrival—due to a disastrous misunderstanding with a close friend—he had to take control of an insurance agency. He did not want it, but he had to make it succeed in order to save the large amount of money he had invested in it.
By the spring of 1973, he was in the third straight year of constant strain and stress in the operation of the business. He had recently been converted through the ministry of the Rolling Hills Covenant Church in Southern California in answer to the prayers of his wife, Betty, and her many Christian friends.
One day that spring, the continual danger of defeat, the dark hours of effort, the frustration at every turn, and the hardened memories of the cause of his financial difficulties came upon him with special force. As he drove toward his office, he suddenly was filled with a frantic urge to turn left onto the road out of town and just disappear. But into the midst of his inner turmoil there came a command: "Pull over to the curb."
As he relates it, it was as if the words were written on the windshield. After he pulled over, there came to him, as though from someone with him in the car, these words: "My Son had strains that you will never know, and when he had those strains, he turned to me, and that's what you should do."
After hearing these words, Robert sat at the wheel for a long time, sobbing aloud. He then drove on to his Long Beach office, where he faced 22 major, outstanding problems. All the most significant problems—whether they concerned company disagreements, clients deciding to remain with his agency, payments by clients of late premiums, or whatever—were substantially resolved by that day's end. [Dallas Willard, Hearing God (InterVarsity Press, 1999); used with permission] It's amazing what God can achieve in our lives if we just turn to Him.
Don't miss time alone with God today. Get up early. Go to bed late. Find the time. Jesus' priority is our mandate. What Jesus needed, is for us, a necessity. Don't make God command you to turn your car over to the side of the road. Don't let it get to that. Turn to Him now and often.
Prayer: Father, we need You. Every hour we need You. Be our strength and peace. Grant us victory today over the enemy and the allure of this world. Let our words be a balm for the hurting, encouragement to the discouraged, a beacon that leads to You. Let our minds be the fertile ground for the seeds of Your word. Let us see Your glory. And let us give You glory. In Jesus name, amen.