…of the Rest of Your Day

S:

Ephesians 1:2

I greet you with the grace and peace poured into our lives by God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ.

(Message)

O:

From the opening to one of Paul’s letters to a church he had started previously, we find this verse. He is simply acknowledging his role between these believers he has become so fond of, and God who has given him this role. Paul was completely and ultimately concerned with how people, whom he had first converted, were growing and progressing in their Christian life.

A:

I have been struggling with where to go for posts of late, until I was praying about it this morning, and really felt led to go back to my roots and start from there. What I mean by this is going back to doing exegetical work on scripture passages, but rather than making a sermon/devotional/homily to address everyone, I am going to focus on simply addressing married men.

One of the things that I have been reading and working on personally has been a book being endorsed by Paul Byerly on emotional mature spirituality. What I have picked up as I have read through this amazing resource, has been a sense of stepping back and taking a look at the overall big picture. Yes, there are a lot of details to work through, and actions to contemplate, however, in the grand scheme of things, it is the big picture we need to focus on more often. As I have been reflecting on this process, I have found myself asking, in various situations, is this really going to matter at the end of this particular day, much less one week or five years from now. In many, many situations, the answer is “No”, and how often that answer is the result of the question has surprised me. What I have been discovering is that the things that do matter are not the urgent, but they are the important. Let me try and illustrate this…

On your way home from work, how often do you still find yourself stewing about that confrontation at work, rather than taking your drive time to pray past it and start focusing on your family and most especially, your wife. Most everyone goes into their marriage thinking that this is going to last for a lifetime, but when the shininess wears off, and the urgent starts staying in focus too long, we lose sight of the important, and that is the fact that our marriage was designed by God to be the longest lasting commitment we have in this lifetime. However, that commitment does not just happen without work and effort.

Paul opens his letter by acknowledging the fact that he can only greet the Ephesians by relying on the grace and peace poured into his life by God. What would happen in your marriage if you consistently took the last ten minutes of your drive home to pray for God to pour grace and peace into your heart and mind as you walk through the door of your home, to greet your wife. Yes, you both need to decompress and communicate what has happened during your respective days, but if you committed to taking even three minutes to just focus on each other, and how happy you are to see each other and be back together…how do you think the rest of the day would go? Do I do this…I’m learning.

P:

Lord, help me to drop the issues of the work day, and focus on greeting my wife with your grace and peace. Amen.