I remember the sessions from my high school days, a moment intended to create a self-evaluation of the use of my time (good), which ended in guilt (not-good). I sat with pen and paper, attempting to make a rough pie chart, while our leader went through the questions.
“How many hours are there in a week?”
Twenty four each day, times seven days. One hundred sixty eight hours.
“How many of those hours do you spend sleeping?”
If I’m trying to get eight hours of sleep a night…fifty six hours.
“How many of those hours do you spend at school or work?”
About eight hours five days a week…forty hours, maybe more.
“How many of those hours do you spend doing extracurricular activities? . . . How many of those hours do you spend recreationally, doing something fun with friends?”
On and on it went, with the activities and responsibilities of my week slowly chipping away at the hours allotted to me each week.
And then of course came what was to be the climactic question: “How many hours a week do you spend dedicated for the Lord?”
Two hours at church on Sunday, two at church on Wednesday night, and maybe 30 minutes for devotions each morning…
My teenage self looked at the meager sum. Not even eight hours a week. It was minuscule compared to the total available hours I’d started with. What was I to do? Sleep less? Drop a lesson or a night out with friends? If Christ was supposed to be my top priority, and that priority was reflected in how I allocated my time (the clear point of the lesson), then what was I to do when He currently only occupied a sliver?
At the time, my heart, so keen on living a committed Christian life, was struck by guilt and despair. Now, I look back on this with a wry smile and look back on my younger self with compassion. Now, I realize this exercise, and the guilt it sparked in me, reflected a faulty understanding of life as a disciple of Jesus.
But I also find this memory to be sobering because I know there are still faithful Jesus-followers, sitting in church pews each week who are laden with guilt that they aren't doing more "church things." They feel guilty for not feeling the call to drop everything and move to a foreign country. They feel less-than for not being able to wake up at 4 a.m. to devote extra hours to prayer. They, to be frank, feel like a second-class Christian for not devoting more time to explicitly "spiritual" endeavors.
These brothers and sisters have little to no vision for how day-to-day life can be fully dedicated to the Lord. How spending time in conversation with a coworker might be just as God-honoring as time in a Bible study. How doing good work as a health care worker or teacher or parent might be just as valued in the Kingdom of God as attending that extra prayer meeting. They have no imagination to see how God wants to permeate, fill, and transform every part, place, and relationship within their everyday life.
All that we do can be dedicated to the Lord, all can bring Him glory, all can be done with Him as the top priority. He doesn’t get only the sliver of our church activities, personal devotions, and explicitly spiritual or Christian ministry time. He gets all of it. I always think of a quote I once heard from Abraham Kuyper, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’” And this does not mean we drop all but explicitly "Christian things", but rather that we look for Christ in all we do. A dear monk named Brother Lawrence centuries ago spoke of how he “practiced God’s presence” while he washed pots and pans! [Learn more about Brother Lawrence in my post "Practice the Presence of God."]
Jesus' invitation to us, as to his first disciples, is "Come follow me." We follow Him into our offices, our homes, our game fields and studios, our times of religious devotion. In all of this, we look for His Way, we seek to follow the way that He taught us to live. In all of this, we keep our eyes and hearts open to see where He's already at work in our world, where He's inviting us to be His hands and feet, and where He's opening up doors of delight and fulfillment and Kingdom-living as we engage in this world He's created for us.
We, as the church, can disciple and encourage each other to see all of life as a part of discipleship. We can help spark an imagination that sees the work of God in the ordinary and the presence of the Holy in the mundane. We can shape a vision that sees how our whole life can be dedicated to God.
We have an opportunity to release whole-life disciples of Jesus into the everyday places of our communities, to commission people who engaging in everyday Kingdom work outside of the church walls. And we have a chance to breathe life and encouragement in the weary hearts of those who need to know that a sliver on a pie chart is not an accurate test of their faithfulness.