Not all hours are equal. Are you ready to make an hour of your week more meaningful? 

What was one characteristic common to all Messiahs/prophets? I’m going to use Jesus as an example because most people in America know at least a little bit about Jesus. What did he do all day? He healed the sick. He fed the hungry. He clothed the poor. He did not, however, spend an hour a week inside singing songs and debating the tenets of religion. The tenants of every major religion are the same when you boil it all down:

1. Help your neighbors if they are in need

2. Be nice to everyone

3. Be selfless

The three points are completely obvious, and there is no need to debate what your religion calls you to do. You know what you have to do. You don’t need any more information about what your God wants you to do. It’s all about helping your fellow human beings and the only way that you can do that is by getting outside and actually doing it. 

Let me give you some numbers to think about: 77.2 percent of people in the United States identify as religious, which is roughly 246,190,800 people. It’s estimated that between 31 and 36 percent of the religious people in this country attend a religious service once a week or more. Just for the sake of math, let’s take the average of that number, which is 33.5 percent. So if 33.5 percent of the 246,190,800 people who say they are religious are attending religious services (which are about an hour in length, usually) once a week or more, that equals about 82,473,918 hours of people attending church services. 82,473,918. My question is, what could be accomplished in those hours? The short answer is so much. But since I’m a writer, I’ll give you the long answer.

Instead of spending an hour a week in a religious service, why not spend an hour a week (or more) volunteering? The lessons you learned in your religious services were clearly stated. There’s no need to continue learning about them in a “classroom”-like setting. Why not learn about what it means to be selfless in real life? Why not do as your Messiahs/prophets did and spend that hour a week doing something truly meaningful?

The next time you’re in your religious service and you’re asked to bow your heads in prayer, think about who you are praying for your God to help. Is it homeless people? The hungry? Single mothers? Rape victims? Orphans? Animals? Your God cannot solve all our problems. Only we can do that. Real action is worth infinitely more than a prayer directed in a certain direction. 

So here’s some food for thought: Even if you already volunteer a lot, why not add another hour on? If you don’t volunteer at all but you attend a religious service every week, go out and volunteer for an hour instead. Your God will be grateful to you because you are taking his teachings to heart and taking action. Skip your religious service and go out and make a difference, even if it’s only for an hour a week. Together, our single hours could equal 82,473,918 hours of volunteering instead of 82,473,918 hours of not volunteering.