Above All, There is God...

We get awfully busy and tied up in our lives.  We get awfully technical about what we can and should be doing.  I just spent an afternoon being trained to do a capital campaign for a religious organization.  Not one word in the training concerned prayer or the work of the Holy Spirit.  We had our work cut out for us.  We had to be prepared and careful.  We could get the job done if we followed the formula and put some time in.

I have no doubt that we can do some of that...and I'm here because God called me to be here...which tells me I have a job to do in this work to be accomplished.  But...we are not the local organization up the street and we are a not divided people who function at one point in time as a secular people and at one point as a faith people.  We are people of God called to bring God to the world--whatever we are doing.

One person I spoke to explained to me that the afternoon was just the "technical" part.  Nope.  The "technical" part of living as Christian means knowing every minute of every day that God is in charge, that we are God's servants as well as God's children.  The "technical part" of living as Christian is that all we do is from God, all we have is from God, all others do and have is from God.  The difference between us and the rest of the world is that we know God's sovereignty while they may not.

A beautiful story in the New York Times this week gave me a new reminder of God at work in my world...in our world.  A surgeon who performs the Jewish bris (circumcision) as part of practicing his faith was asked to perform a bris for a couple's son after his death.  The words, repeated seven times to make the ceremony kosher, Above All, There is God...

In any situation, good or bad, extraordinary or daily grind, repeat to yourself seven time: Above All, There is God.  It puts the world into its proper place...because above all, there is God!