There's Always Something More Important

There’s always something more important than God. Errands, family issues, work, etc. Everyone knows our adrenaline-based society lives off of caffeine highs, energy shots and 6 a.m. wake-up calls. So it’s no surprise that when we catch a moment of stillness and quiet, we don’t know how to handle it. It’s our twenty-first century nature to thrive on a hectic schedule, getting from here to there in the most efficient way possible and using every second to our advantage.

After participating in this lifestyle so long, we not only embrace our fast-track destiny, we cling to it whenever a moment of true silence approaches. Terrified of what these moments might bring, we feverishly avoid the hard-hitting questions. You know the ones. Those questions that catch up with you that you can only avoid for so long ‘til they end up slapping you across the face when reality hits. Questions like: what course of action should I take in this situation? What is God’s will for me? What are the right words to say here? We continuously bypass taking the time to ask for these things beforehand, but the second we need something, our hands assume the praying position and our heads finally glance upward. Why is it that it usually takes a crisis or a desire that needs filling for us to turn to God?

We’re called to have a constant and intentional relationship with him, which is something I found very hard to learn. When you’re a kid sitting in church, the sermon seems like a set of do’s and don’ts that you have to live by. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Don’t cheat, and so on. But that’s a smaller part of Christianity than I could comprehend at such a young age. I had the image of God as this judge, sitting on an almighty throne and waiting for us to mess up so He could punish us. That’s what God seems like to a child who constantly hears rules and guidelines.

God is a judge who takes sin seriously, but we tend to forget one of the central images of Christianity, which is the Son of God, struggling to breathe on a cross, bruised and bloody. Not a pretty picture? Well, to a Christian it should be the most beautiful image as we know that his love for us went beyond expectation. He put all selfishness aside and became sin for us. All of our selfishness keeps us from loving others and even God as Jesus Christ,

“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-9)

Every breath and every step he took, he was living to glorify his heavenly Father. IF we lived that way, how powerful would a movement like that look to the non-believer? To me, when I look at any sin, selfishness can be found at the root of all of them: pride, greed, anger, malice, the list goes on. But if we used those precious moments of silence and asked for a change of heart to be more like Christ, that selfishness could have the potential to be replaced with an extraordinary gift: unconditional love. And what better example to model ourselves after but the one who has walked in our shoes, who knows the hardships and temptations of a human life, who upheld a righteous life and yet still bore our sins on a cross despite his blameless record?

God, give me strength to live selflessly as your Son did and put others before myself.

Diane Elise