The flowing of the sands of time always reminds us that we have even less time to get to know our God and even less time to do His work. Yet that work doesn't diminish - as a matter of act, it keeps growing. So maybe it's a good time to evaluate our priorities. What is it that we actually live for?
As far as I can tell, with all the theology books and How-To books on Christian living out there, you can pretty much summarize what our priorities should be into 3 ideas: worshiping Him, serving Him and bearing witness to His Name.
Everyone's busy. We all have to go to work, do our chores, study for our finals, work on our projects. And if we're lucky, we might juts have time to relax after that stressful family vacation. Now if we're not careful, we may just view our Sunday gatherings as times to pick up some wise words to help us through the week. Don't get me wrong - that does happen. But if we miss out on the essence of the "worship" service; i.e. worshiping God, then we're not really going to get much out of that bit of wisdom from the preacher. Remember, God is the source of all wisdom and worshiping Him benefits us - not Him. So don't take your time of worship - whether with your community or by yourself - for granted. In the end, spending time with Him is what strengthens us - not reading books and filling our heads with knowledge.
Most people work hard - it's one of the values we learn to accept early in life and hopefully live by. Sadly, sometimes that work ethic stops at the time clock. We work hard because we know we're getting paid. But working for God is a different matter - most of the time monetary compensation isn't really there. In short, we do it for free. But that's exactly why we need to rearrange our priorities. We need to work for God not for rewards but simply because that's what we're called to do and it's the right thing to do. We need to give our service to the church just as much effort and importance as we do our regular jobs - in the sense that we do what we can to the best of our abilities rather than seeing it as "volunteer" work and setting our standards really low. This is why I never call it volunteering - I call it serving God - and when done with the right attitude, it is noble, selfless and though not financially rewarding, will yield its rewards eventually in eternal currency.
Lastly, we probably need to make our storytelling a bigger priority in our lives. We're all very fond of talking about food, about our hobbies and our accomplishments and latest score in entertainment or sports. But we should probably make Christ a more natural part of our conversations. It is often said that people talk most about what is important to them - we see salesmen do this all the time - after all, selling their product is their job (see work above). Could it be that our relationship with our Savior isn't really that important - which is why we don't hardly talk about it? I don't know what's worse - having a non-important relationship with God preventing us from talking more frequently about it or being ashamed or fearful of rejection when we talk about something as corny as a Savior loving us enough to give His life for us. If we truly value His presence in our lives, why don't we talk more about it? Let's talk more about God this year and make it a priority.
Worshiping Him, elevating our level of service to Him and Making Him a bigger part of our conversations - not exactly earth shattering, but doing more of these will certainly bring us into a better place in 2010 than we were in 2009.
