Pray Always

1 Corinthians 13: 13

“Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.”

I lived on the Gulf Coast of Florida for 45 years and in that time I dodged a lot of hurricanes. A few my wife, Barbara, and I rode out, something we would never do again. For some of them we evacuated as a precautionary measure. But there were three or four major hurricanes that threatened us and our region during those years and we escaped because there was reason to believe that we could return to a home that no longer existed.

With a tornado there is very little warning but with a hurricane you have hours, sometimes a day or so, to make preparation. You leave in your car and take with you essentials. What do you choose to take knowing that everything else could be lost forever?

Those experiences taught me two basic life lessons. The first is the importance of simplicity. We need a lot less than we think we do. There are 25 million storage units in the US housing stuff people think they need but don’t even have immediate access to. But choosing a life of simplicity opens the door to spiritual riches. Jesus clearly understood and taught this. “The Son of Man has nowhere even to lay his head,” he said. And the revered saints of the ages—St. Francis, Mother Teresa, and many others—all practiced it.

The second lesson is priorities. Do I take that silver goblet or costly painting? No, I take key records and I take keepsakes that connect me to the important people and values in my life. The apostle Paul said that three things last forever—through hurricanes and tornadoes and cancer and everything else—these priorities are faith, hope and love. I might expect Paul, knowing what I know about him, to say that the greatest thing is faith. Instead, he echoes what Jesus taught us in the Great Commandment. It’s love. Horizontal and vertical love. People and self and first of all love for God. These are the things that really matter.

Dear God, unclutter my life and continually remind me to be a person who puts first things first. Amen.

This devotional was written and read by Herb Sadler.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: podcasts@1stchurch.org.

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.