Take Time to Be Holy

This past Sunday we sang an old hymn, "Take Time to Be Holy", written by William Longstaff, that begins with this phrase in its second verse: "Take time to be holy, the world rushes on"  Those words stuck with me because they seem even more true today than when they were written.  Our world rushes on at a frantic pace.  We have things planned days, weeks, months, even years in advance; our calendar seems to fill up before we even get to each day.  On top of our general business, we’ve now added smart phones and social media that keep us connected to everyone 24/7 and fill up those moments that in the past may have enabled us to slow down and think about what we’re doing.  Time flows by and we’re too busy to see it passing, we may not stop to take a breath for weeks at a time.  How, in this sort of environment, can we be a holy people?  The hymn has it right, we need to “take time”.

What does it mean to “take time to be holy”?  Holiness doesn’t just happen on its own, it isn’t something that God does through us whether we’re part of it or not.  Holiness is deliberate and it needs considerable time and effort on our part.  To be holy means to be set apart for God’s use.  The tabernacle and the ark were holy because they only had on purpose, the worship of God.  Likewise, things like communion and baptism are holy because they are only used in our fellowship together and worship of God.  So, how can you or I, as individual followers of Jesus Christ (and part of the larger body of Christ) BE holy?  The only way that we can hope to accomplish this is to set aside parts of our lives for the use of the kingdom of God.  This includes time, resources, and talent, and it needs to be something that we consciously choose to do.  We all have commitments and responsibilities, God wants us to honor those, and we all need to take time to exercise and rest both our bodies and our minds, but we need to make sure that we’re not squeezing God in when we have a few extra minutes.  We need to take the time to be holy, make it a part of our lives, a regular and expected part, because it is the only way that we will be able to make progress in our mission of becoming like Christ.  Take a look at your calendar for the next week, the next month, where is the time in there for you to be holy?