It’s Thursday, But Sunday’s Coming

“It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming” is the recurrent riff in sermon many people know thanks to Tony Campolo.  His pastor preached it and Tony made that line famous.

“It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming” is a reminder that even on that afternoon that Christ was dying on the cross, it was only what I like to think of as the next-to-the-next-to-last chapter of God’s story.

It was Good Friday, but Easter Sunday was coming.  And then came the chapter in which you and I live on this side of Easter.

But today is still only part of the next-to-the-last chapter.  As the ancient biblical prophets said, there’s a Final Day still to dawn.  Or as Tony’s pastor preached, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming.”

“Uhm, Joe, sorry to break this news to you, but it’s Thursday.  It’s not Friday.”  Right you are: it’s Thursday, but Sunday’s coming.

In the newest novel by Dean Koontz, he writes of a grandfather who tells his grandson that he “always took pleasure in playing” piano for people for money, “but when he played at home, it was ONLY for pleasure.”

Then his grandfather advised,

If you’re going to keep the music in you,

you’ve got to play a little bit every day

purely for pleasure.  

Otherwise, you’ll lose the joy of it.

That might explain what happens to so many who once claimed to love and follow Christ Jesus: they lost the joy of it…not all at once, but a little bit every day.

Today let’s you and me ask God to help us do what 1st Timothy 1:6 says and “stir up the gift of God that is within” us.

Yes, it’s Thursday, and yes, Sunday’s coming.  But let’s not wait until Sunday.

If we’re going to keep God’s music singing in our hearts and minds and lives, we’ve got to play that music a little bit every day.

See you back here tomorrow.