After staring at the computer screen for a long time, trying to think about what I wanted to write about in my column this weekend, it is a sign of just how blocked I was feeling that I am going to write about Marky Mark, from “Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.” I was never a fan of their music, so I do not expect that many of you know them either, but most of you probably know Marky Mark since he now goes by his real name, Mark Wahlberg, and he has made more of a name for himself through his acting than by his music.

So why a column on Mark Wahlberg? Because I saw something interesting that he posted on Twitter recently. Apparently he has a pretty amazing daily schedule. He says that he gets up at 2:30 AM everyday, that he works out twice a day, there is regular time scheduled not only for work, but for family time. And the reason for this column is that for the first 30 minutes of his day, Mark Wahlberg spends in prayer. His daily schedule says a lot about Mark Wahlberg’s priorities in his life, and the fact that he starts his day in prayer tells us just how important God is in his life.

Apparently, that was not always the case for Wahlberg. He was born and raised in the Boston area, and in a Catholic family, however, he did not take his faith very seriously. In fact, he wandered pretty far from it. As a teenager, in addition to his rap music career, he was also involved in violent crime and racism. When he was 15-years old, he and a group of friends several times chased and threw rocks at African-American children while shouting racial slurs. When he was 17, physically assaulted two Vietnamese men. He was charged with attempted murder, and later convicted and sentenced to prison.

Wahlberg reports that it was in prison that he realized that his life was out of control, and he turned to his parish priest for guidance. He was told to pray, and it is a habit that he has continued all these years. After getting out of prison, he quit the gang he was in, and started to surround himself with friends who would be more supportive of his faith. This is not to say that he has been a saint – he admits that he has made some poor choices in terms of films that he has been in – but he has been a committed disciple. 

He is now married, and he and his wife have four children. Recently it was in the news that one of his daughters made her First Holy Communion; her proud father tweeted it. Faith and family are clearly the two biggest priorities in Mark Wahlberg’s life. I commend him for that.

What would our daily schedule tell us about the priorities in our lives? I thought I was doing pretty good at getting up at 5:30 AM, and I am certainly not suggesting that we all need to get up at 2:30 AM like Mark Wahlberg, but is prayer something we schedule into our daily life, or do we just fit it in when we can?

God has made us a priority. We are in His thoughts constantly. Each beat of our heart, each breath that we take is a gift from God, and God wants to give us so much more. He wants us to have eternal happiness. We do not need to be perfect (yet), nor do we need to be a saint (again, yet). All we need to be is a disciple, committing ourselves to following Him, step by step, a little more each day.