The conflict between the urgent and the important is inescapable. How easy to get the two confused!
It is common for us to think that by staying busy and working hard we’re dealing with the important things. But that is not necessarily the case. Those things most urgent rarely represent things that are most important. And therein lies the reason so many people today feel such a lack of satisfaction after working so hard and for so many hours each day.
Not only is that frustration true in the world in which we live, it is all-the-more true in the church. When we substitute the urgent for the important in the church of Jesus Christ, we emphasize work, activity, involvement, doing, producing, impressing, and accomplishing. But it often leaves us feeling flat and empty. Exhaustion replaces satisfaction. Furthermore, it smacks of the secularized world in which we work. Who knows how many people have been turned away from Christianity, longing for the true, living God but encountering at their church a secularized substitute?
Perhaps this helps explain why so many activities in so many churches distract from the one essential ingredient that makes a church unique in this postmodern society: worship.
When we look at life with a horizontal perspective, the urgent takes center stage. It is loud. It is popular. It is product-oriented. The horizontal highlights all things human . . . like human achievement, human importance, human logic, human significance, human opinion, human efficiency, human results. It demands our time and attention. As that ever-present tyranny screams at us, the most natural reaction is to yield, giving it our first priority. After all, it’s urgent! We’re all-too familiar with its voice.
The important things, however, are different. They are quiet and deep. They are vertical in their perspective. They highlight the things of God—God’s Word, God’s will, God’s plan, God’s timing, God’s people, God’s way, God’s glory, and God’s honor. And the goal of all these? The worship of God.
The underlying objective of a church committed to the important things—rather than the urgent—is the cultivation of a body of worshipers whose sole focus is on the Lord our God.
—Chuck
You've done it again!The chaff of our spiritual existences has been blown away, displaying, in many cases a dearth of wheat. We have called activity the anointing;perspiration has been confused with inspiration;style has replaced substance. Through it all He reminds us that all that we do will either be wood/hay/stubble;or gold/silver/precious stone. Again, we have been reminded (like Elisha) that though the church world looks for the earthquake, wind, and fire,and the bigger- is- better mantra ; He still asks us to worship him in the still small voice.Onward....the prize awaits.
Posted by: John Crawford1 | April 19, 2011 at 07:34 PM