Take Time to be Holy….Just yesterday I found myself singing the words to this beloved old hymn. This song was a reminder of a conversation from the day before and the importance of prayer, Bible study and staying close to God.
My sister and I were discussing the past and a time of renewal we had enjoyed in our old home church back in 1972. Besides a county-wide revival that year our church hosted a couple of Lay Witness Missions where members of other churches from miles away came and shared their testimonies for a weekend. I mentioned the one thing I had enjoyed most about the last mission was the wonderful food that was shared at the home of one of our members. At the ladies’ Lunch and Prayer Time that Saturday was when I discovered salads.
We church members had been asked to bring either a meat salad, vegetable salad or a fruit salad. Up to that point, a salad to me consisted of lettuce and tomatoes or perhaps tuna or chicken salad served on a sandwich. Those ladies brought meat salads….tuna, chicken, beef, ham, bacon….and vegetable salads: green peas, kidney beans, broccoli, spinach, cucumber….you name it…. and fruit salads galore. I was in salad heaven and to this day I love nothing better than a salad supper.
As we were discussing this and the fact that what I remembered most was the food, I told my sister I was reminded of something I had recently read in the Bible about the people who followed Jesus across the sea after He had fed the 5,000 with only five loaves of bread and two fish.
John 6:26 Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled. 27 Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.
Though it happened years ago, how I wish I could remember more about the testimonies given that day (which surely filled my spirit and blessed my heart), than about the food that filled my stomach.
These people, just the day before, had sat with Jesus and listened to His message then followed Him only hoping to get more food. “Labor not for the meat which perisheth,” Jesus told them.” I wonder, which is more important to most of us today…. filling our stomachs or filling our hearts with God’s wisdom and having our spirits renewed?
Jesus said in John 6:51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world…. 63 It is the spirit that quickeneth (is enlivened); the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
Like the song says, let us: Take time to be holy. Speak oft with thy Lord. Abide with Him always, and feed on His Word.