We have all been there. It's Sunday morning, and despite the sound of your alarm reminding you it's time to start the day, you absentmindedly hit snooze and roll back over, wishing for just a few more precious moments of warmth and sleep before venturing out into the world. Your mind floods with a list of all the things you have to do today, including family responsibilities, shopping trips, sports games on television, and chores that need tending to. But first up on that list is getting yourself (and the kids, if you have them) up, dressed and out the door for church. And this is almost always easier said than done.

Sundays can often feel like a time warp for me. They have the peculiar quality of feeling both incredibly long and incredibly short at the same time. It's easy for me to get lost in this, and more often than not I'm dragging my feet longer than I should. I know what time the services start, but hey, it's the weekend, right? And it's not like I'm missing anything other than a few songs I've heard a hundred times before. I don't think these thoughts consciously, but I'm pretty sure they exist somewhere in the back of my mind as I stand in front of my closet, trying to figure out which pair of pants I'm going to wear.

At this point, I want to speak directly to you, Living Faith. I do this not to pick on us or to ignore anyone else who might be reading this, but I have observed a pattern within our body that I worry is indicative of a larger issue. And since it's my turn to blog this week, I want to come right out and say it:

We've got to start making it a priority to be at church on time.

As one of our worship leaders, I have the privilege of "setting the table," so to speak, for our Sunday services. I'm one of the first people in the building Sunday morning and one of the last to leave. I'm there to prepare technical things, make sure the microphones work, make sure the team knows what's expected of them as we run through the set lists. But one of the chief burdens I carry on the Sundays I lead is the burden of leading us into God's presence. Part of what I do is lead us in the songs we sing, but we don't sing songs for the sake of singing. We sing to remind ourselves of what's true. When we sing hymns both ancient and modern, when we recite creeds together, when we lift our voices in prayer and adulation to God, we are including ourselves in a family of faith that goes back centuries. It may seem like "song time" when everyone comes through the main doors, but I promise you it is anything but. We are fighters on a battlefield, shouting back the advances of our enemy with the truth that our God has already won, that Jesus has overcome death and we do not need to be afraid. Those moments of worship shape the very foundation of our lives. Yet we continue to view the beginning of the service as optional, reducing it to "song time" and nothing more.

It's time we took a stand to change that.

If we believe what we profess to believe, we ought to be half an hour early to worship times, not half an hour late. We ought to be preparing our hearts to meet with our King in earnest, eager to catch every word He would graciously give us. We ought to be encouraging our friends and family to join us in prioritizing being on time for the same reasons. No wonder we so often wait to hear from God and walk away dissatisfied; we have given Him as much priority in our day as we have the laundry waiting in the washing machine. We basically tell Him, "I'll get to it when I get to it."

We are all guilty of this, and let me be the first to raise my hand. I am probably even more at fault than you here, and I'm the one writing. I pray we can receive this as an encouragement, a call to action in something that seems insignificant on the surface but really reveals the values of our hearts. Let's be on time this week, not so we can check another box of our list, but so we can encounter God. He's worth being on time for.