Pay Attention

It was a glorious day yesterday- mid 60s, sunny, and Sunday. Daffodils were blooming, and the sky was blue. What could be better!? I had slept almost not at all the night before, so full of joy for Matt and his victory at the ABA Appellate contest. To top it off, we had to "spring forward" an hour. I crawled a little miserably out of bed. I went to church with a headache and not feeling very well. The regular pastor wasn't there, so the pastor who leads the Spanish service was speaking instead. He has a very thick accent. I am a little hard of hearing in the best of circumstances, and never have been great at deciphering thick accents. Between my headache, lack of sleep, and the accent, I understood about every third word. I am sorry to say that the only phrase that fully registered with me was that in his native country of Brazil, soccer is called football. I normally can stay right in tune with the Godly message our wonderful pastors preach. But my tired brain spent quite a bit of time rolling off on the tangent of how really, soccer SHOULD be called football, since the entire game involves kicking the ball with one's feet. In our version of football, however, most of the game involves running with the ball in one's arms, and very little time is spent actually using the feet in American football. By the time I had thought over this conundrum to the extent that I felt it really was silly of America to call soccer soccer, and not football like the rest of the world, it was time for communion and the service was over.

If heaven were based on our attentive worship, I was going to hell.

When I wasn't focused on football, I was watching the interpreter, who signs the sermon for the hearing impaired. I always watch her carefully to try to pick up at least one new sign a week. This week, I figured out the sign for "walk" and "life".

I am a heathen, I thought, when we said our final prayer. I realized I could not have given a single sentence about what the message had taught me. This is not like me. I am usually very attentive and dutiful, and usually very convicted of how I need to modify my life to be better in tune with God's desires for me. Not this Sunday. This Sunday, all I learned was that football is not very well named and the sign for 'walk' makes a lot of sense.

Fortunately, heaven is not based on my attentive worship. It is based on my belief that Jesus paid the penalty for my sin, including my sin of thinking about football instead of Him during church, and if I accept that gift and believe that He is Lord, heaven awaits!

2 Peter 1:19 (NIV)
We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.


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