The Power Of a Passing Thought

The Power of a Passing Thought
It’s Saturday morning, and I woke a full hour earlier than I intended and felt that I needed.  But already my head was buzzing with things that had to be done today.  Various jobs had been piling up through the week, and some, like writing Praise & Prayer News, seemed challenging.  Usually, I have a clear sense of what I would write by the middle of the week.  But not this week.  Then, as my mind was juggling with how to plan the day and get important tasks completed on time, two things happened almost simultaneously.

The first was reading the words that a ministry colleague had written as part of a series the Congregational Federation has been publishing entitled”A Secluded Place”.  Various authors contributed to the series, and some I had appreciated more than others.  I sat on the edge of the bed, and without much enthusiasm, scrolled through the short piece that Elaine had written about a worship song in Spanish that another colleague had brought back from one of her trips abroad.  I identified with her comments about the difficulty of learning worship songs in foreign languages and how often they fail to engage and inspire in the way intended.

Clearly Elaine and her husband had not allowed the difficulty to cause the simple song to be cast aside.  She wrote about how she sang the song “to herself” (or did she mean to God as a personal act of worship?).  She had included a YouTube link so, by then intrigued to hear the words in Spanish and English, I clicked the link.  As I listened to the long forgotten tune I found myself singing along in an act of quiet worship, sensing God’s presence, and realising that in a busy day not finding time to spend in worship is foolish.

What might have been no more than a passing thought (and I had certainly not expected to give it much time) had taken hold and claimed its rightful place front and centre. 

My other passing thought was a phrase in one of Paul’s letters to Timothy.  The second letter to Timothy is full of encouragement and exhortation to be faithful in his ministry as time when many had proved unfaithful, and some in Ephesus were actually opposing the gospel Paul had faithfully taught.  While there are some verses in this letter that have found universal application, there is much that seems so specific to Timothy that it only comes to our attention at times such as the induction of a new priest or minister.

Tucked among this list of important things that Timothy was to ‘get on and do’ are the words, “... do the work of an evangelist…”.  It is one of only three references to the ministry of an evangelist that we find in the New Testament.  To me, it seems like a passing thought, a “by the way” comment.  But perhaps among all the other duties and responsibility\s to be borne by the younger man (and also by us), care was needed not to forget something that was essential.

In busy times, when there is much that is needed to be done, some things are too important to be left as passing thoughts.  To press on working through our ‘to do’ list without making time first to be still and consciously spend time enjoying and worshipping God is both wrong and foolish.  Time so spent is an investment in our lives.  At the same time to allow all that we have to do today to squeeze out our responsibility to say something about our faith and who is at its centre, is to treat lightly all that Christ suffered for us and our salvation.  The story is not ours to keep it is God’s and he wants us to share it with others.

Just a thought… but don’t let it pass.