The teacher gift that God gave to the church is a blessing in ways words can’t describe. That gift teaches us things we could not know, because of their love for studying the word of God. On Sunday, Tom Trout, the teacher in our church spoke on Acts 3, 4, and 5. He gave us many gems we can ponder for years to come, but one is sticking out to me today. He told us the book of Acts spans 30 years. With 28 chapters, that means each chapter can almost represent one year each plus a few months. When you read the book of Acts, it seems like one year not 30 years. Time is a gift we must cherish when reading the word of God for it puts life in perspective.

The book of Acts is a highlight reel of people in the New Testament. Whether we read about large figures in the book like Peter, John, Paul, Timothy, Barnabbas or Silas, or lesser known figures like Apollos, Aquila, Priscilla, or Lydia. Highlights of moments in their life, snap shots of situations are spoken of in this book with these people. If we think this was day to day life, our life can seem boring, uneventful, even insignificant in light of what these people did, saw, expeienced. But the truth is, this book covers 30 years of life. We all can put together a 30 year highlight reel if we wanted to and it would look like we were skipping from mountain top to mountain top.

The truth is, daily life can feel mundane, boring, and even slow at times. When others are having a highlight moment and we are having a mundane one, frustration can come, hope deferred can flare up, emotions can arise. But we cannot base our moments on other people’s moments, for there are a lot of minutes in a day, hours in a week and days in a year, so we do not all have the same moments at the same time but we all do have moments. I pray we learn to celebrate others moments, and that others celebrate ours. We are not in a race or a competition, we are on an adventure with God and each other and some days are mundane while others are moments we will never forget. Let’s celebrate with each other, it will make the mundane more memorable because we remember what happened for someone else.