The sacred and the secular world
The sacred and the secular world
2 Corinthians 5:1 “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.”
Extra Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:1-21
One great evangelist once said that one of the greatest hindrances to internal peace which the Christian encounters is the common habit of dividing our lives into two areas-the sacred and the secular. He was absolutely right. As these areas are conceived to exist apart from each other and to be morally and spiritually incompatible, and as we are compelled by the necessities of living to be always crossing back and forth from the one to the other, our inner lives tend to break up so that we live a divided instead of a unified life.
As humans our trouble springs from the fact that we who follow Christ inhabit at once two worlds-the spiritual and the natural. As people we live our lives on earth subject to the limitations of the flesh and the weaknesses and ills to which human nature is heir. Just living among men requires of us years of hard toil and much care and attention to the things of this world. In sharp contrast to this is our life in the Spirit. There we enjoy another and higher kind of life-we are children of God; we possess heavenly status and enjoy intimate fellowship with Christ.
This tends to divide our total life into two departments. We come unconsciously to recognize two sets of actions. The first are performed with a feeling of satisfaction and a firm assurance that they are pleasing to God. These are the sacred acts and they are usually thought to be prayer, Bible reading chorus singing, church attendance and such other acts as spring directly from faith. They may be known by the fact that they have no direct relation to this world, and would have no meaning whatever except as faith shows us another world.
Just after considering sacred acts we now turn to consider secular ones. They include all of the ordinary activities of life which we share with the sons and daughters of Adam: eating, sleeping, working, looking after the needs of the body and performing our dull duties here on earth. These we often consider a waste of time and strength.
Prayer: O God, help us not to divide your world into secular and sacred departments. Help us to see it as one whole. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Rev. Samuel N. Modise 
