I ran out of gas this week – not literally but figuratively. By late morning on Wednesday, I was out of gas, out of steam, bone-tired and feeling completely overwhelmed. I was tempted to chalk it up to post-Holy Week and Easter finally catching up with me, or to that awful green pollen affecting my eyes and nose and making me feel crazy, or to just plain not enough sleep. But I knew, deep in my heart, that my feelings of being overwhelmed had other causes.

In sheer desperation, I headed over to the Franklin Covey store at the mall – the store that sells calendar-planning systems. They give a 20% discount to clergy, by the way. I told the sales clerk I was looking for “salvation in a binder”; that I was after “new life and resurrection through planning and organization.” At that point, the sales clerk smiled, rather cautiously, I thought… I knew that I was feeling overwhelmed because I wasn’t on top of things enough, I wasn’t focused enough, and I was really busy doing a whole bunch of things that seemed completely disconnected and unrelated. I was busy doing lots of things, but was I doing the most important things? I clearly needed some help.

The calendar planning system I eventually purchased (o.k. - it was an expensive kind of salvation) is based on Stephen Covey’s best-selling book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” Now most of the time I want to run screaming in the other direction from how-to books that set out to solve all the problems in one’s life simply by learning how to be organized. But as I said, I had run out of gas, so I was ready to be not quite as snobby as usual.

Stephen Covey’s premises are simple – they are really pretty common sense when you get down to it – but sometimes we really do need someone else to tell us things that we are just too stubborn or too distracted to see for ourselves. The bottom line? We’re supposed to put the most important things first, not last! (Like I said, this is not rocket science). We need to identify what’s most important to us – our values – and then set some goals. So, now I have a very nice new red binder that tells me stuff I already knew but which I clearly needed to be reminded of. But now I’m also thinking carefully and thoughtfully about what the most important things are. About what salvation really means. My new red binder helps, but the gospel lesson for today helps more.

Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Now when someone asks us if we’ve been saved, what they are asking us if we’ve accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior. And most of us would say that yes, we’ve been saved. In our baptisms we were marked as Christ’s own forever. But behind that “Are you saved?” question is a particular way of understanding what salvation means. It means that if we believe in Jesus, we will go to heaven; if we don’t; we will go to hell. It means we’ve been freed from sin by Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross. Taken as the sole meaning of salvation, as merely a question with a yes or no answer, it is somewhat limiting.

The saving message that Jesus brought, taught and modeled was much fuller and richer and deeper than equating salvation only with someday getting to heaven. Jesus said not only that he was the way, the truth and the life, but also that he had come to bring life in fullness – abundant life – to human beings. To receive Christ’s offer of salvation is to receive Christ’s saving offer of full and abundant life. One author defined salvation as: “wholeness and health, wellness and well-being, the life of one who experiences fullness of life.” Jesus is our savior; the one who tells us and shows us what the good life is really all about. And note that wholeness and health means spiritual wholeness and health, not physical wholeness and health. We can be spiritually very healthy while being physically very sick.

Salvation, Jesus tells us, is in the here and now, not just in the hereafter. Salvation is a present invitation, not just a future promise. To accept salvation is to be invited into a life full to overflowing right now. “I am the way to the Father,” Jesus says. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

To live an abundant life, Jesus taught, to live a full and spiritually healthy life means that at the very top of our agenda, at the very top of all our planning, God comes first. “To be fully human, to experience fullness of life, is to live in an ever-deepening and loving relationship with God.” An ever-deepening and loving relationship with God. That comes first.

But I think that the trouble our hearts get into, on a periodic basis or increasingly over time, is when we lose track of that. When we are so busy doing so much for God that we forget to be with God. You could certainly point to my little melt-down this past week and see what trouble my heart got into when I wasn’t putting my relationship with God first – before all my other relationships, before my work, before my ministry. I was spinning my wheels, I was feeling frustrated, I was unhappy. You have your own meltdowns; I know you do. You have your own stories to tell of times when, spiritually speaking, you’ve run out of gas.

For the next few weeks, in the Adult Forum, we’re going to be focusing on “end of life” issues. One of the things I’ve learned, or maybe re-learned, as I’ve done some background reading for our series, is that the full and abundant life to which Jesus invites us includes the awareness that our deaths are part of our living. According to Jeremy Taylor, an Anglican priest of the 17th century, who wrote a book entitled, “Holy Living, Holy Dying”, living a holy life “requires that we devote our lives to the right end, namely, to grow into an ever-deepening and loving relationship with God.” Putting our love of God first, we are then freely able to love others, just as Jesus said so simply so long ago.

Our salvation is God’s gift to us through Christ. Our salvation comes in the form of full and abundant life, in spiritual health and wholeness throughout this lifetime and into the life beyond this life. To be saved doesn’t mean that we won’t suffer, that we won’t get stressed, that we won’t get sick, that we won’t get spiritually stuck on occasion. What it does mean is that as long as we put our relationship with God first and foremost, as long as we open ourselves to be transformed in love through his love, we will have all we will ever need and all we ever really wanted. And it will be good.

Henri Nouwen, now deceased, but a prolific author on aspects of the spiritual life, wrote this prayer:

“Dear God, though I experience many ups and downs in my emotions and often feel great shifts and changes in my inner life, you remain the same. Your sameness is not the sameness of a rock, but the sameness of a faithful lover. Out of your love I came to life; by your love I am sustained, and to your love I am always called back. There are days of sadness and days of joy; there are feelings of guilt and feelings of gratitude; there are moments of failure and moments of success; but all of them are embraced by your unwavering love.”

I wrote that prayer in my new red binder this week.