On the work of faith

I had an odd week recently. I got a screw embedded in a car tire (it was a week-end, of course) so I had to deal with that over the course of a couple of days. Soon after, the indicator lights on my car dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree, and I had to tend to more car matters. Then, again on a weekend, a pretty severe traffic accident happened right in front of me as I was sitting still at a traffic light. One of the vehicles involved had flipped onto its roof and was spinning down the road right toward me. It stopped literally inches away from my car. No one was seriously hurt, and I escaped any involvement. But, as you can imagine, the occurrence left me a little…tense.

Sandwiched between these stressors were the usual distractions and aggravations that accompany day-to-day life. You have heard the term “death by a thousand cuts.” It refers to the fact that one simple wound is not life-threatening. But if you repeat the injury enough times, the cumulative effect is lethal. I’ll have to admit, that is just about how I felt at the end of that week-long stretch.

In the course of my ministry, I have conducted a lot of weddings. Prior to those ceremonies I always spend some time with the couple and talk about the importance of the step they are about to take. One of the cautions that I always offer is that it is not always the big things that threaten a relationship. Money, jobs, family – these can cause stress but their very size can prepare the duo for coping with what is to come. I remind them that it is the little things -- the knuckle-cracking or the insistence that the toilet paper roll should be refilled so that the paper comes over the top – that truly threaten marriages. No one thing drives a spouse away. Inattention to dozens and hundreds of seemingly insignificant concerns has been the cause of a lot of married couples deciding to go their separate ways.

I suppose that all of this comes under the umbrella of “Distractions.” These are not the things that start out on our To-Do List. But, as we seek to concentrate on that which is important in our lives, the unplanned pops us in such a way that we must deal with it. Or something floats around on the periphery of our work and we allow it to lure us away from our primary concern.

This happens more than a lot of us would like to admit. We allow our attention to drift in the workplace, in our households, in our relationships. And we let it occur in the course of our practice of faith. All of us would agree that it is important to spend a portion of our days in prayer, in Bible reading, and in other forms of religious expression. Sometimes, though, if our calendar gets full, these spiritual disciplines are the first things that we sacrifice. Or, if we do sit down to study our Bibles, an occurrence in the scripture story reminds us of an experience in our own lives and before we know it, we have spent considerable time thinking about something that is not faith-related at all. In our prayers we may commend the needs of a particular person to prayer, but the face of that person pops into our minds, and then we remember their spouse, and their parents, and the old house they used to live in and before you know it, we lose our true prayer attention.

A meaningful personal religion does not happen by accident. The deepening of one’s faith is not a casual side-effect of having once professed belief in Jesus Christ. A close personal relationship with God comes in the regular exercise of those disciplines It requires focus. It requires intentionality. It demands that we desire that relationship more than we desire to pay attention to the transient things that would steal our attention.

Deuteronomy 6:5 reads: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” This is not a casual undertaking. It requires effort. The instruction carries with it a sense of labor, of hard work. At the very least, it calls us to find the will-power to prevent our distractions from ruling us.

__________

Our scripture readings for Sunday, September 5 are: Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23;  Psalm 125 ; James 2:1-10, (11-13), 14-17 ; and  Mark 7:24-37.