Our lives are often complicated and busy. Just think for a moment of all that you were involved in this past week. We put in our time at work. There are the daily chores; everything from preparing meals to doing the laundry, from doing the dishes to picking up after the kids, from picking up the mail to paying the bills. If your week was a normal week, there also were runs to the grocery store to pick up the day to day food items that we all need. Then there were special runs to pick up those things that you forgot. If you have kids at home, you went back and forth to school several times this past week. If the kids are involved in sports, there were extra trips. Then there are those other tasks, other involvements that we all have in our individual lives. We are busy in the community, busy at home. By the time that a normal week ends, we are tired.

Somewhere in our busy lives it’s important to find time for ourselves, time for our spouse, time for our families and time for God. Among all the other pressures and demands of living, God is the one who often gets squeezed to the edges of our week. Sadly, in some lives and in some families God gets squeezed out all together. There just doesn’t seem to be time to be with God as he comes to us in worship. There isn’t time for Bible study. There isn’t time for Sunday school. There isn’t time for home devotions where we sit down with our family or alone to spend time with God in his Word. And then we wonder why we are so lonely. We wonder why our lives seem so complicated, so troubled. We wonder why there’s a gnawing emptiness inside as we lay down to go to sleep at night. We wonder why we struggle with so many worries.

That happens not so much because our lives are busy. Rather it happens because we have chosen to build our lives focused on the wrong priority. Being a disciple of our Lord Jesus is a matter of putting ourselves aside, and making him and our relationship with him a priority in our life. Discipleship involves commitment. Commitment is our Lord Jesus leaving his throne in heaven, taking upon himself our sin and our sin’s curse. Discipleship is following in Jesus’ footsteps. It is understanding that our Lord Jesus died on the cross not just to forgive us, but also to set us free from sin. Peter understood that. He writes in his first Epistle, “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example; that you should follow in his steps.”

That means that our relationship with our God is our first priority. That means that our relationship with our God as he comes to us in his Word and Sacrament are not a complication in our lives, but a matter of first importance. That’s what Jesus is talking about when he says to his disciples in John 8: “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

As you read the stories in this edition of Passionate Believers, my encouragement is that you review and measure your priorities. Ask yourself; for whom am I living? Why do I do the things I do? Why do I say the things I say? As you mull over those questions, read Acts 8:26-40. Why was Philip on that lonely desert road? Could he have passed the Ethiopian by? Have you passed by the Ethiopian, the neighbor, the coworker, the family member? Where does “witness, mercy and life together” fit into your life?