Sunday School 104: Who has Time for God these Days?

Who has time for God these days? Distractify has Answers . . .

From an Opinion Article by Jeff Mullin, Enid News & Eagle (Oklahoma), August 23, 2014

Thanks for taking the time to read this little ditty. I know how valuable everyone’s time is. After all, I barely found time to write it.

No one in authority has let us in on this, but I contend time has been altered somehow. It’s kind of like inflation, except with time. Just as a dollar doesn’t go near as far as it used to, neither does a minute. I figure minutes are really only about 45 seconds long now, and days last a mere 22 hours or so.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it seem that as soon as you get up in the morning and get ready for your day, it’s time to go to bed again? And just as soon as you get your Christmas decorations put away, darned if it isn’t time to put them up again. We are busy, busy, busy.

The website distractify.com has determined that the average American spends 25 years of their life sleeping, 10.3 years working and 48 days having sex, which means we have our priorities all screwed up. Speaking of work, the average office worker spends five years sitting at a desk and two years in meetings. Kill me now.

Women will spend nearly a year of their lives deciding what to wear, 17 years trying to lose weight and 1.5 years doing their hair, largely because men spend a full year of their lives staring at women. We spend 3.66 years of our lives eating, and over the course of a lifetime will consume close to 35 tons of food. No wonder my pants are too tight.

There just aren’t enough hours in the day. Between working, sleeping, commuting, eating and using the bathroom, we hardly have time left for surfing the Web or messing around with our smartphones.

The average American will spend nearly 27 hours per month online and more than 34 hours on their smartphones. In an average day, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans sleep for 7.6 hours, work for 8.6, eat and drink for 1.1, perform household activities for 1.1, care for others for 1.2, and engage in leisure and sports for 2.6.

That leaves 1.8 hours, which probably includes bathroom time, unless that is included in household activities. All of which leaves precious little time for God.

A 2013 Gallup Poll tells us that roughly 40 percent of Americans attend church, synagogue or mosque in any given week. In Oklahoma, that number is closer to 49 percent, making our state the 10th most religious in the nation, again according to Gallup.

Going to church takes time. Depending on the denomination, services can run from an hour, to an hour and a half, or longer. According to the website www.americanpreachers.com, one of the top 10 reasons that people give for not going to church is that they don’t have time.

A church in Illinois is trying to address that, guaranteeing services that last only 30 minutes. Trinity Memorial Lutheran Church in Merrillville, Ill., advertises a half-hour service. “We’re able to do church within 30 minutes, and no one feels cheated,” the Rev. Richard Boshoven told the Chicago Tribune. “It doesn’t feel rushed. You can leave wanting more.” The service at Trinity Memorial consists of one song and an opening prayer. Rev. Boshoven then reads a story from the Bible and the congregation talks about it, there is another prayer and they are out the door. Boshoven said his cellphone is set to vibrate when his 30 minutes are up.

Would shorter services draw more people to church? What if you went to church and never had to leave your car? In Florida, the Daytona Beach Drive-In Church has been delivering its own unique brand of worship since 1953. The pastor’s voice is broadcast to each car over a special FM frequency, but otherwise the service is pretty conventional, featuring scripture readings and a choir singing hymns.

Congregants at Woodland Drive-In Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., have been praising the Lord behind the wheel since 1970. The church bills itself as “Reaching out to those who don’t come in.”

I wonder if either church has a snack bar? If you don’t even want to take time for a drive-in church service, consider drive-through prayer. A church in south Florida, Estero United Methodist Church, offers drive-through prayer services every Wednesday from 5-6:30 p.m.

Drivers pull into the church’s parking lot during their evening commute home and members of a volunteer group who call themselves the Prayer Warriors gather around each car and join the motorist in prayer. “After we pray over them and bless them, they leave,” drive-through prayer leader Pam Sebby told ABC News. And as for those uber-busy drivers who simply honk as they drive past? “We pray for them, too,” said Sebby.

In the end it doesn’t matter how, how long or where you choose to worship, only that you do.

>> NOTE: Does anyone have time for protection of the environment? Can WV-DEP process thousands of chemical storage tank permits by the end of the year? Could the State provide a drive-thru permitting process to speed things up? Actually, I cannot find the time to finish this message as I am going on vacation! You are on your own for a couple of weeks, hopefully God is at your side! DGN <<

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Tagged as: Chemical storage tanks, church attendance, drive-thru activities, inspector duties, prayer times, WV-DEP