Lessons From The Urinal

First, you have to know there are rules (and I’m thinking that it’s a worldwide rule but haven’t done research on this yet) about proper urinal etiquette. Ladies reading this: You wouldn’t understand this at all, so you might need to stop reading and move on from here.

So I’m in the Oakland airport using the restroom while waiting for my flight. As I’m standing silently at the urinal with a gap between the next occupied urinal and myself (etiquette priorities 1 and 2), I broke etiquette priority 3: Always look straight ahead (#4 being remain silent). I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t believe what I saw from my right side peripherals. I quickly had an argument with myself for about three seconds and then I looked over ever so slowly. You know what I saw? The guy who filled that required gap between me and the next guy was reading. He walked up to the urinal, got himself all comfortable, then pulled out his book to continue to read.

All that I could think was: Wow! We’ve taken multi-tasking to a whole new level. I’ve heard of people reading while going to the bathroom in the privacy of their own homes, but I’ve never seen anyone pull out their book at the public urinal and pick up where they left off. (I will never borrow a book from that guy should I ever see him again.)

After this life-changing experience, I seriously started to ask myself, Have I become like the guy who reads while at a urinal? Have I become so busy that the regular pace of my life is multi-tasking? Have I become so necessary that the plight of the world depends on whether or not I am reachable via cell/email/Twitter/Facebook/Myspace/text/...? It is over this past week that I’ve come to find out that I often multi-task with God: getting my quiet time with him out of the way quickly so that I can get to the urgent things that demand my attention.

To think, I get to spend as much time as I want with the God who created me and I’m rushing through that time as if I’m really that necessary. Because the truth of the matter is this: Nothing else on this planet really, truly compares with an intimate and passionate relationship with Jesus. To look for ways to cheapen that time with Christ in the name of ministry is to cheapen the relationship that he truly came to bring. If we’re not careful, pretty soon we’ll multi-task our time with Jesus at the urinal.