The time is now

I began writing this in the above post but decided it was lengthy enough on it's own, so I am posting it separately.

The sermon today in church was very moving and motivating. The pastor spoke about the universal human questions: Who am I? and Why am I here? He stated that for the Christian, those questions have already been answered. The pastor told a story of a mentor and his new student. The student, beginning his mentoring, waited all through the night as his mentor sat there, and the student wondered when his mentoring would actually begin. Finally, as dawn approached, the student burst out, "Well, when do we start?" The mentor calmly said, "Now." The student sat blinking. "Well, where do I go?" he asked. "Anywhere where there is no path," the mentor replied. The pastor said, like the student, we often sit waiting for God to tell us to begin and what it is he wants us to do--when really God is waiting for us to begin, because we've already been told what to do and because the time to start is now. The pastor spoke of the needs around the world, giving statistics such as the fact that while thousands, even millions, may die each day from starvation, the United States spends $8 billion dollars a year on pornography. The United States spends more in a year on trash bags than 90 countries do on everything they own. As I pondered the need around the world, I had to ask myself what we as a church--what I as a Christian--were doing about it. I realized it is so true: so many of us, including myself, sit and wait for God to tell us what it is he wants us to do. We've already been told! God is the one waiting on us, waiting on us to begin the task he's already set out for us to do: we are to love God with all we are and to love our neighbor in the same way that we love ourselves. And the Lord doesn't say to wait until we're "grown up" or "mature" enough to begin: he says the time is now. If I am to begin loving God with all I am, that means cultivating a passionate love relationship with him every day. Loving my neighbor as myself means being concerned about the needs of my fellow human beings all over the world. It means feeling grief over the starvation and disease and poverty so many face; it means anguishing over the millions who die without Christ each day. And then it means being willing to do something about it.

The time is now; let us obey and be faithful to what God has already called us to do.