Ah, glorious April! Is there a touch of the Transcendent in the carpets of daffodils and singing of the birds? Do we have glimpses of God’s glory as the mountains produce hundreds of shades of green and the trees awaken to their new season of growth?

Yes, and yet… how the Transcendent gets trashed by the mundane in April! Is there ever a month so packed with activities that there isn’t time to breathe? I remember when I was a college student I bemoaned the presence of final exams and other closing of the year madness in a month when I just wanted to smell the roses. Someday, I reasoned, after those degrees were completed, I could enjoy the month for what it should be- an exercise in worship.

Not so. It just gets worse. Every good cause has a banquet, a retreat, a “walk”, or a picnic in April. Sunday- that wonderful Sabbath of rest and delight in the Lord- becomes clogged with extra luncheons, closing productions, and omnipresent meetings. Somehow worship becomes squeezed into a plethora of other activities. We get too busy to meditate, pray, or study God’s Word. People begin dropping out of their Bible studies and prayer groups in order to meet the demands of their garden, their lawn, and their tax forms.
Wise people say that in times like this we are too busy not to pray. How do we say ‘no’ to good things? How do we order our days that the priority of ‘God first’ is maintained?

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I wish I had the answer.

This year, at least, I’m dropping 2 lunches, one ‘walk’, two banquets, 4 teaching opportunities, and even a church-wide picnic at our own farm in order to spend two weeks rafting with a group of Christians in the Grand Canyon. This, hopefully, will be a two week worship service away from life’s frenzy.

I’ll let you know how it goes. Will the mundane push out the effects of sunrise in the Canyon and sleeping under the stars? It’s possible that sleeping on hard ground, blisters from hiking, the unexpected storm, and literal ‘cold water’ will distract me from the eternal.

But then, maybe that is what it is supposed to do. Perhaps each of these frustrations causes us to be just a bit dissatisfied with the here and now and long for the time when truly those diversions will vanish. The promise of eternity looks better and better, doesn’t it?

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