I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
Psalm 34:1
In the last reflection, we spoke about making intentional time for God—intentional time to pray, to read Scripture, to worship. We need to make time consistently on a daily basis to spend time in prayer and to meditate on Scripture. We need to make time consistently each week to worship. One temptation with this “intentional time” is that we might look at our relationship with the Lord as something that fits into a compartment. For instance, if I spend fifteen minutes every morning in prayer and reading Scripture, and two hours at Divine Liturgy on Sunday mornings, I might think, “that’s nearly four hours of checking the ‘God box,’ the rest of the week is mine.” And if someone told us, “Fifteen minutes a day with God, two hours on Sundays, and the rest of the week do whatever you want and you are on the path to heaven,” we’d actually all probably jump at that. Four hours for Him and the rest for whatever we want to do.
So, while there should be intentional “God-time,” really all of life is supposed to be lived under the umbrella of Christianity. Each of us has an identity that consists of two parts—things we do, and things that we are. Some examples of things we do might be our jobs—we work specific hours and then most of us disengage from the job and move to the next task. For instance, a Christian woman is a married mother of a child, who works as a teacher. She teaches in a classroom all day, and after school, she goes to her son’s baseball game. While at the game, she is no longer a teacher, she is a fan. And then she goes home and cooks dinner for her husband and son, so she is no longer a teacher or a fan, but a cook. The entire time she is teaching, be a fan, or cooking—things she does—she is at all times a mom, a wife, and a Christian. It’s much easier to be a Christian if we look at it as something we do, rather than as a part of our identity. Because we can’t take a break from our identity. For those who have young children, you can’t just leave them for a couple of days and take a break. For those who are married, you can’t just leave your spouse for a week because you need a break from them. We can change jobs if we are dissatisfied, but we can’t trade our kids in for new ones.
If Psalm 34:1 sounds familiar to you, it might be because it is read throughout Great Lent at the Pre-Sanctified Liturgy. I love this Psalm. It begins by stating the obviously importance of blessing the Lord at all times, and praising Him continuously, “in my mouth.” Let’s think about that for a minute! Think about all the unhealthy and unkind words that come out of our mouths, everybody’s, including mine. These might be bad, curse words. They might be unkind words. Or they may be corrective words delivered in an unkind tone. Imagine if we centered our words around the idea that they must continually praise God, so that if we have to say something that is corrective, we say it in a way that honors God, which means it doesn’t demean the person we are directing it to.
Psalm 34:15-19 offers us some words of comfort: The eyes of the Lord are towards the righteous, and His ears toward their cry. The face of the Lord is against evildoers, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous; but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
These words will not be comfortable to the one who has God in a compartment, especially if that compartment is limited to worship once a week, with no time spent with God in the middle of the week. Being brokenhearted and crushed in spirit at times is part of every life, for some more than others. It is faith in God that carries us through the rough times, and it is having God in our consciousness at all times that relieves brokenness, because there is a focus at all times of where we are going—heaven—and how we are going there—one step at a time with the strength and grace that comes from God.
We think about our spouses and our children constantly, for those who are married or who have children. For those of us who have parents, we think of them constantly. Some of us, right or wrong, think about our jobs constantly. Do we have the same intensity with our thoughts about the Lord, or salvation, or the big picture of life and what its all about?
There is a saying, that our lives should revolve around God, not that God should revolve around our lives. We shouldn’t be putting God on the calendar, in between the birthday party and company softball tournament. God should BE the calendar and we should revolve our lives around Him.
Can you imagine if God put US into a compartment, and told us His grace, love and mercy would only be available in certain windows of time? God loves us at all times, we are not what He does, but Who He is, the Father, Creator and guide of all of us. It’s a very humbling thought to reflect that the mind of God has a place for us in it on a daily basis. Think about that, there is a specific place in the thoughts of God for you and for me, that’s how important we are to Him.
One personal note—one of the greatest challenges of the priesthood is that it is an identity. It’s not something I do, but truly something that I am. And it’s a challenge when that competes with the other things that I am—a husband and a father, specifically. I don’t pause often enough to say this, but thank you for your prayers and encouragement for this Prayer Team ministry and for my ministry/life as an Orthodox priest. I can’t thank you enough.
Lord, thank You for my identity as a Christian. Thank You that You are part of who I am, at all times, and in all places. Thank You for not putting me into a compartment, but sending Your grace, love and mercy on me continuously. Help me to place You at the center of my life, ahead of all my identities, ahead of all that I do. Give me the wisdom to let my life revolve around You, and to avoid the temptation of making You revolve around my life. Help me to connect with You throughout the day, and give me both Your grace, and my discipline, to let the things that come out of my mouth give praise to You today, and always. Amen.
God should not revolve around our lives. Our lives should revolve around Him. Being a Christian is not something we do. It is something we are. And our Christianity should not be something that fits into a compartment but like an umbrella under which our entire lives are based.
