Hebrews 3:13- But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today.”
I just could not wake up this morning. Each time that alarm went off, I reached over and whacked it a couple of times, silencing it’s incessant noise and allowing myself the luxury of just nine more minutes of fleeting slumber. It took about three cycles of this process before I finally decided that I had exhausted any cushion of time that I might have and still not be late to work. As wonderful and necessary as those 27 minutes were, they didn’t come without a cost. My morning routine was now compressed by a missing 27 minutes. Where I would have had the luxury of cuddling with my son before he went off to school, or even enjoying a bite or two of breakfast, or even taking a moment to speak more than 11 words to my wife and give more than just a peck on the lips goodbye for the day, I now had to hustle and stress just to get out the door so I could attend to the “important” matters of the day.
As I sit here at my desk, I realize that snooze did not give me the start to the day that I really wanted, and that really mattered. I may have delayed my entrance into the inevitable, but I certainly made the inevitable that much less fulfilling as a result. So here’s the point: I think that quite often, we snooze a lot of other things in life and in the process we miss out on some very precious moments in life that we could have been blessed with if we hadn’t said to ourselves, “I need this time to myself, I’ll get to in in just a few minutes.” The writer of Hebrews admonishes us to take the time and present opportunity to share words of encouragement with one another: today. In other words, when the opportunity arises, when the moment is ripe for sharing an encouraging word, don’t snooze. So many precious moments in our lives are lost in the hustle and stress to attend to the “important” matters of our day, because we have snoozed through what could have been time well spent in building and strengthening bonds of meaningful relationship with family, friends, and neighbors.
Let’s hope we’ve learned our lesson about snooze today. If throughout today we’re presented with the chance to encourage others, I hope that we have the presence of heart and mind to not hit our internal snooze buttons and say, “I’ll have time to do that later on. Right now I have more “important” things to attend to.” By keeping to that commitment today, I think that we won’t regret having given up on snooze for the day.
-Chaplain Andy