Every Moment, Every Minute

I was standing in line in a restaurant one day this week. There was a couple of college kids behind me, talking about music. One (the girl) didn't like the music that the other one liked (the boy). The girl, from what I could gather, took issue with the lyrics. The boy told her, "Tell me one song you don't like, and I'll tell you the story behind it -- what it really means, and why the lyrics aren't bad."

I also read this sermon, by Rob Adams, who is a lay speaker in Savoy, Illinois. He asks some interesting questions. Do we divide our time into "Jesus time" and "Regular time?" Are Sunday mornings "Jesus time" while the rest of the week is "Regular time?" He took a few pieces of secular music, and asked the congregation to hear them with "Jesus ears." Do we have such a huge division between the secular and the sacred that we think the two can never meet?

Consider this line from The More:

The more Your glory becomes all there is
One thing that I have noticed about writing for this blog DAILY is that I have to keep my eyes and ears open for the sacred in everything. All the experiences around me can become metaphors for life with God. John of Locusts and Honey comes by the blog each week and indexes entries that meet certain criteria. It can be interesting to me to read each week how he has described my week of blogging. Sometimes, I say to myself, "I don't think I said that." One week, though, I got a real kick out of his description of my week:

Sandpiper compared the Parable of the Prodigal Son and the King David's relationship with Absalom, the fragility of the Christian faith and the fragility of certain chemical compounds, and feeling God's energy with static electrical transference. You certainly can't fault Sandpiper ofr a lack of creativity. She also wrote about the grace of change and composed a marvelous story about a man's encounter with an angel.

I love that line -- "You certainly can't fault Sandpiper for a lack of creativity." Excellent. He may have meant it sarcastically, but I found it to be high praise.

Looking for God in everyday life is a discipline -- it becomes a habit to see God everywhere. Just like Rob was showing his congregation that God's message can be found in even what is considered secular music, God's message is EVERYWHERE. To build barriers between what we want to classify as "Jesus time" and "Regular time" is artificial. It can become a barrier between hearing the Word and doing the Word. Face it, there are very few opportunities to act out the Word in a church service. We have the opportunity -- the obligation to worship during that time, but not much chance to turn God's love for us into our love for others.

The more we know of God, the more we realize that the hour on Sunday morning is only the beginning. To think that it is an isolated hour to spend with God is fallacy. It would be like a Nascar driver spending time with his pit crew, and then not racing. "Jesus time" isn't the finish line -- it's the starting gun.

Wanna give You every moment, every minute
I'll take a lifetime to know You
Hold me Lord, keep me
Draw me closer every moment of my life
Image: Another one from the football game last night - no alterations done with software this time.