by The Right Reverend Daniel R. Morse

Bishop Co-adjutor, Diocese of Mid-America

Every morning when you wake up, you have to decide what you are going to do that day. That decision can be relatively easy or difficult depending on other decisions you have already made. If you have already decided that if you don’t go to work you will not get paid, and therefore you will not be able to eat, then you get up and go to work even if you are sick. You weigh the relative merits of losing pay by staying home to get well versus the discomfort of going to work sick so that you won’t lose any money. There may be other considerations besides sickness, but the point is that every morning when you wake up your decision as to what you are going to do that day is determined by priorities that are determined by your desires. If you don’t mind starving to death you will stay home watching TV until you breathe your last. On the other hand, if you don’t like the idea of dying, you will do whatever is necessary to stay alive.

This is simply to say that whether you are aware of it or not, you establish priorities as soon as you wake up every day. Most of those priorities are predetermined by other decisions you made many years ago, which means that you aren’t conscious of making decisions. You just get up and go about your business. Of course, your daily life would be incredibly difficult if every day you had to start all over again, and the fact that you don’t do that simplifies your life.

But what are the priorities that lie behind those decisions? Your decisions aren’t made in a vacuum. They are made on the basis of what you think important, and you rank your daily activities on the basis of that importance.

Most people have private and family considerations as the only priorities, and they organize their daily activities around those. They know that if they rob banks or don’t pay taxes they will be carried off to jail and will not be able to do the other things they want to do, so they are careful not to do those things. They plan their lives around private and family interests and are able to fulfill those plans if they stay out of trouble.

Those two considerations cannot be the only ones for the Christian because the Christian is also a member of the Church, and membership in the church requires an agreement to live by some other standard than private and family priorities. Being a Christian means that a person admits there is a fundamental flaw in our private and family life caused by sin that can be corrected only by the ministry of Christ through his Church and conformity of the private and family life to the rhythm of the Church.

That rhythm is seen primarily in the Church’s instruction and the worship of God on Sunday. There may be other important ministries of the Church, but those on Sunday are indispensable in the life of the Christian. This means that if you truly and sincerely desire to be Christian in your whole life you will make the first priority for your whole life to take advantage of all that the Church has to offer on Sunday. Having made that decision, your life will be greatly simplified on Sunday morning when you wake up since you will not have to decide whether you will come to Morning Prayer, Sunday school, and Holy Communion. You will already have made that decision, and so you will already have ordered your affairs to wake up, eat and get dressed, and leave your house in plenty of time to participate in those things. If the ministry of Christ through his Church is not the first priority of your life you will either not be at those services, or you will be late.

Another part of your thinking, besides your own personal benefit from the church’s ministry, must be the blessing you give to others around you. Your presence, or absence, not only has an effect on you, but on all the other members of the church. You will not only be blessed by attending worship, but you will be a blessing to others even if you don’t say anything. It is understandable that on occasion you may have some good reason to be absent from the Sunday services of the church, but habitual absence or tardiness is inexcusable and elicited Apostolic warning in Hebrews 10:25. If you are out of town on business or vacation for the week you should make every effort to return so that you can worship in your own church on Sunday. I am convinced that casualness and habitual tardiness rob you of the blessing of God, cause disruption to others, and are an insult to God.

What are we teaching our children when we put other things before the ministry of the Church, put off arriving at the services until the last minute, or arrive late? How will we be able to combat selfishness in them, when they see so little concern in us to order our own lives according to God’s will and pleasure?

Ask yourself, What would the church be like . . .

• If everyone attends like I do?

• If everyone gives like I do?

• If everyone arrives like I do?

May God give us grace to give him the best of our lives, to love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to show that love in the way we order our lives.