Today’s Lectionary Readings: Psalm 97; Isaiah 2:6-11; Matthew 25:1-13; Acts 1:6-11; Psalm 25
If you’ve turned on your television or radio lately, you’ve noticed that retailers are trying to convince you that time is running out. The commercials incessantly bring home the same point: only 21 shopping days left until Christmas! Several of today’s lectionary readings pick up on a similar notion: timeliness. The passage from Isaiah talks about the impending day of the Lord; the passage from Matthew talks about the five virgins who find themselves unprepared when the bride groom presents himself; and the passage from Acts tells the story of Jesus informing his disciples they can’t know the specific times or dates of God. The readings ought to give us a different sense of urgency than the commercials on television or the radio: a sense that our spiritual lives DO matter and ARE worthy of our attention! In this post-Christian day and age when our spiritual lives have gone from being the first priority in our lives to becoming simply one of many things competing for our attention, I invite you to examine where your spiritual life falls on your lists of priorities. Is it at the top of your list, or does it fall somewhere else – somewhere, say, between taking the kids to soccer practice and picking up your dry cleaning. If you discover your spiritual life ranks lower on your list of priorities than you realize, perhaps its time to start paying more attention to it. Right here. Right now. Til next time…
If you’ve turned on your television or radio lately, you’ve noticed that retailers are trying to convince you that time is running out. The commercials incessantly bring home the same point: only 21 shopping days left until Christmas! Several of today’s lectionary readings pick up on a similar notion: timeliness. The passage from Isaiah talks about the impending day of the Lord; the passage from Matthew talks about the five virgins who find themselves unprepared when the bride groom presents himself; and the passage from Acts tells the story of Jesus informing his disciples they can’t know the specific times or dates of God. The readings ought to give us a different sense of urgency than the commercials on television or the radio: a sense that our spiritual lives DO matter and ARE worthy of our attention! In this post-Christian day and age when our spiritual lives have gone from being the first priority in our lives to becoming simply one of many things competing for our attention, I invite you to examine where your spiritual life falls on your lists of priorities. Is it at the top of your list, or does it fall somewhere else – somewhere, say, between taking the kids to soccer practice and picking up your dry cleaning. If you discover your spiritual life ranks lower on your list of priorities than you realize, perhaps its time to start paying more attention to it. Right here. Right now. Til next time…
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