A Life Worth Living

Just a Minute, God

I had a desperate need to talk to God last night.

The culmination of different incidents and stresses over the course of the week had left me floundering, despairing and needing to feel God's arms around me. I knew the solution to my distress could be found in three simple things - music, meditation and the Bible.

My spirit needed repair. My soul needed healing. My entire being needed to be close to God once again. All I needed to do was to spend some time with God.

Instead, I chose to check my emails.

After all, I had spent the entire day in the city without an opportunity to check my inbox. There may be an important email lying in wait for me (the fact that I wasn't actually expecting an important email any time in the near future didn't matter).

"It's only eight in the evening," I rationalised. "I'll spend time with God in a few hours, when I'm ready to go to bed."

It was at that precise moment that God floored me.

How many times have I put off reading the Bible because I had more "important" things to do?

Daily prayer and the daily reading of God's word should be essential in my life. Instead, my daily routine consists of checking emails, watching TV, chatting with friends, pursuing my hobbies and reading anything but the Bible. Time with God is often relegated to the last agenda item of the day, and only if I'm not too tired.

How is it that the most important thing in my life has become the least important feature of my day?

I don't put off lunch just because I have to check my inbox.

I don't switch off the TV if House is showing just because I'm too exhausted.

Heck, I can even read a few chapters of Terry Pratchett before I go to bed.

But meditating and praying only happens if I have time to spare.

The Bible only gets read if I have energy to spare.

Why is it that we can make time for everything else that "has to get done", but when it comes to God, we take the liberty of bargaining?

The very source of our life. The very reason why we get to do the things we enjoy, and He gets left behind, placed below the very things He gave us. Sometimes, He even gets put off till the next day, because by the time we get to Him, we are too tired, too sleepy, and no longer have time.

How can we have time for everything else but God, the very giver of our lives?

"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well," Jesus says in Matthew 6:33.

Seek first.

Not seek just before you go to bed.

Not seek after you have checked your emails, watched House on TV and made a pretty bead necklace.

Seek first.

I had a lovely time with God yesterday evening.

After he hit me with the epiphany, I spent the next hour or so sitting on my bed, Third Day playing in the background, meditating, writing, talking to Him and reading His Word. I unloaded, I pleaded, I chatted, I cried, I reconnected, and most of all, I healed.

Because as God often does, He immediately spoke to me in Jeremiah 17:7-8, "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit."

I still have my wounds and my worries, but when you walk that little closer back to God, you feel that you can take on the world all over again.

I will still check my emails. I will still watch TV and I will most certainly continue to read voraciously.

But only after I spend time with God.

The others can be put off till later.