Of Celery, Microwaves and Serving God

"Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few;" Matthew 9.37

I was in the grocery store today in the produce section. I passed by a counter and saw this small bag of cut up celery. I glanced at the price tag. $1.99 it read. Celery was selling today at 59 cents a pound in the stalk. This little bag had less than a half pound and was selling for three times more. And in spite of this I was tempted to buy this little bag of cut up celery. Why? Well, it would save me time making dinner. I wouldn't have to cut the celery myself. In short, I wouldn't have to work as hard.

We live in a fast paced, busy world. We are on the go constantly. Even our children have appointment calendars these days. I don't think we are as much lazy people as we are busy ones and we take short cuts to get by. This is no big deal with celery or microwave dinners, but many of us also have been taking short cuts with our service to the Lord.

Many people are perfectly willing to pay their tithe to a local church, but will make all sorts of excuses when someone expects them to teach a Sunday school class, come out to a work day, bake a cake for the bake sale, or even just show up on Sunday night or midweek service. And the reasons we give are that we are just too busy and too tired.

But this does not change the fact that the fields are white unto harvest, that the laborers are few and that the night is coming. Too often we simply expect someone else to take care of the work of our Christianity. We hire our pastors and expect them to take care of everything. After all that's what they get paid for and, well, the rest of us are just too busy. But I don't see that the Great Commission said, "Go into all the world and teach all nations, except of course unless you are too busy to do so."

Very often, the reasons I am too busy are my own fault. I take on extra duties at work which I really didn't need to take on. I buy tickets to secular entertainment activities. I have dinner parties with my friends. I take the boss out to dinner. None of these things are wrong or bad, but when they take me away from serving God, then there is a problem. If I'm too busy to make it to church on Wednesday night, I should be too busy to make it to the ballet that night or the premier of that new film.

I was reminded today, that I have been short-cutting a lot in my life, and I was warned to not do so with my service to the Lord. So, I'm going to leave the shortcuts to my cooking, but I'm going to serve God with a full heart.

Lord, restore to me the fervor for your service. Amen