Lasso the Wind

'Time is tickin' away'. A phrase out of the song "Time Is" by DCTalk, straight out of my teen years. My youth group even created a skit around it. I just listened to it again after seventeen years...I don't remember it sounding so much like Fresh Prince back then. Ha.

Our culture is obsessed with time and schedule. Most success is absolutely dependent on strict adherence to doing things in a timely manner, having a plan, not procrastinating. Each thing in our lives have time limits, from eating to sleeping to going to the bathroom. Limits surround us. Even Believers try to fit time with Jesus into a preordained 'time'.

Because time is precious. It is present every second, minute and hour. Day by day, time ticks on and reminds us that our choices have consequences. I see the consequence of not finishing the laundry the next morning. Or of not doing a final pickup before bedtime. We know that with every click of the second hand, something might be lost to us.

Busyness is really the poverty of first world countries. Our lives are so filled, we either have to fight for what is important or we drown entirely. Most of us can't even see what is important, seeing the forest for the trees isn't a concept that breaks through our miasma of the moment by moment speedway.

After attending a worship event at my church, the last of seven events designed to bring the Church together in Connecticut, I feel the push of two hundred years worth of prayer at my back. The prayer/worship service was especially powerful, and a blessing after six weeks of grieving Sandy Hook.

I feel that time is of unusual importance right now. It feels like the Church in Connecticut is gearing up for God to move...like a soldier shrugging his pack on his back and zeroing in on the mission. I wonder if we are ready. Are we ready to stop. Are we ready to cancel plans. Are we ready to adopt an entirely different way of behaving?

A wonderful friend of mine asked me offhand after the worship service, when we are going to stop worrying about the fact that people have stuff to do the next day. I wonder too. If Jesus walked (in the flesh, since His presence is all around us) into the room, would we stop? Would we stay late at a worship service because the Spirit still has stuff He wants to do? Would we get to work late because God told us to pray for someone?

Would we put our 'life' on hold? Maybe this is just the way I think, and I know it's not normal, but I really feel that what He and I have together is the best 'life' there is. It is worth being number one. It is worth putting the laundry on the couch and just talking to Him. It is worth redesigning our goals as a family, a church, a community, a city, a state, a nation...a world. Because when Jesus looked at Martha and said that Mary had chosen the better thing, He really really meant it.