Emergency

I did it again yesterday. I booted up my computer before I did anything else. Before breakfast. Before getting dressed. Before brushing my teeth.

Opening my email inbox came before everything else, including time alone with the Lord.

It’s not that I didn’t want to spend time with Him. It’s that I felt compelled to see if there were any emergencies that needed my attention. Did my kids/mother/friends/church family/ministry/business/volunteer responsibilities need me?

Today, with my hand poised to press the computer’s power button and start it humming at the dawn of a very busy day, it occurred to me that I already had an emergency—ME.

I’m the needy one. I’m in desperate shape. I need Him.

Why do you suppose the psalmist made a point of saying, “My voice will You hear in the morning, Lord. In the morning will I cry out to You and look up” (Psalm 5:3)? Was it merely routine? Tradition? Or could it have been because the psalmist knew he already had an emergency before the day really began? The emergency was him.

“In this world,” Jesus said, “you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world,” John 16:33.

He could have as easily said, “In this DAY, you will have tribulation.” We’ve come to expect that the hours of our days are sometimes big crises linked together by smaller ones, an endless string of emergencies and mini-emergencies. Crises are a given, Jesus told us. “Stay close to Me,” is what He proposes in His Word, “because I have the power to overcome them all.”

When we plunge into our problems first rather than seeking the Problem-Solver, we’re assenting to the untruth that it’s up to us to solve them, that we are capable of finding perfect solutions on our own, thank You very much.

But what we find is that we spiral deeper and deeper into a churning vortex of the unsolvable, or a dizzying whirl of unproductive activity and contagious emergencies. When we stop to realize the emergency that needs primary attention is our desperate need for God and building our relationship with Him, every pseudo-crisis after that is remarkably manageable.

PRAYER: Lord, remind me at the dawn of every new day that my highest priority is You and the “emergency” in greatest need of attention is the power shortage I’ll experience if I don’t connect with You.

“My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up,” Psalm 5:3 KJV.

Today’s devotional is by Cynthia Ruchti, writer/producer of THE HEARTBEAT OF THE HOME radio ministry and president of American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW). Cynthia’s debut novel—They Almost Always Come Home—releases with Abingdon Press May 1, 2010–http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtZb0by984g. Cynthia writes stories of Hope-that-glows-in-the-dark (www.cynthiaruchti.com).