Sunday worship is a time where we focus for an hour or so on God. The order of service is very familiar: 15 minutes of spiritual songs, a few announcements, a message from the Bible, an offering, and a benediction. Each is mixed well and served in a comforting way. Sweet. But when it is over, we are trust back into a world that is both common place and not quite so holy.
The people we mix with are not all heavenly apparitions of goodness. They are not all angels. We have to live our lives among the heathen. Sure I live in a Christian nation. Even the money I carry in my pocket has “In God We Trust”. But it does not seem like it most of the time. The reality of it all we have to live in a world that, for the most part wants nothing of my Jesus. We must mingle with those who do not love Christ. There are times when life is just full of frustration and discouragement. The issue is we have to live through it. We have to meet the day as they come. Sometimes we would rather just pull the covers over our heads and stay in the silent warmth of our beds.
To live the life that Jesus demands of me I have to live within the rocks of the world. To step boldly as the jagged edges of life try to break my stride is the goal. Each step has to be taken. It does not matter that the ground I tread is trying to break my ankles. So how do I do it? How do I keep on keeping on? How do I keep the momentum going forward, when I want to just sit and reduce the threats?
Life has to be more than existence. It is not enough to just sit and be protected. We have to move on. “If you are not living on the edge, you are just taking up space.” Sure there are times we have to “be still and know” but most of the time we have to make progress. Life is to be a joy not a burden. The joy is not in the destination but in the journey. It is the overcoming the rocks in our path but the victory is moving through them.
Life is more than surviving. Life is more than getting along. Life is more that existing until we get back into our cocoon of our beds to die for eight hours or so. Life is to be lived to overcome our obstacles, to master our experiences, and to have sense of joy along the way. There will be defeats. There will be rocks that bruise us. There will be injuries that seem to disable us from going any further. But there will be times of walking along with the eternal in our steps. We may well wish to be have a little more ease and a lot less of toil. We may find hope that it will get better. But really it doesn’t matter. You see that every one of us must live in our own circumstances. What we make of our lives is not a matter of changing our world but changing ourselves.
It would be cool if we had everything we wanted. To have the whole world at our finger tips. Never to experience pain, disappointment, or sin. How delightful it would be, never to have a care, or a cross or a single negative. But it just isn’t so. Paradise, Shangri-La, and heaven is not here. And longing for It will not make it any closer. Restless discontent cannot change our place. All those around us have their lives they are living and I have mine. It is mine alone.
So out of the bed I go. To live and I choose to live in victory over the boulders in life. I choose to grow and move in the world God has given me to live. Sunday worship is a great place to bask in the glow of perfection but my victories don’t come inside of a church. My life is more than that.