Practice - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

 You know the old joke, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. Practice. How do you get to Carnegie Hall practice? It's a good joke. It's a good joke, right? It's based on the idea of one person coming, asking for practical directions, and the other person is giving them some aspirational idea, and that's sort of the foundation of the misunderstanding.

It's that same misunderstanding between one person trying to be practical and another person trying to be aspirational. It's that same misunderstanding that so often is at the heart of our disconnect from God and our work that Jesus gives us to do. We. Keep trying to make our lives about some aspiration towards heaven, about being a specific, perfect kind of people.

And we turn the Christian life into some ineffable mystery, some intangible thing that we will never be able to do because we seek some sort of perfection, some elusive thing. 'Cause I could practice all day and never get to Carnegie Hall. I just want directions right? But the reality is this is exactly what Jesus is trying to work on.