Skip to main content

Priorities


          “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)

                        One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"
           Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:35-40)

As we are looking toward 2018, and setting the goals I mentioned yesterday, as we get our vision checked, it seems reasonable that we should consider what Jesus considered a priority. It’s so easy to get our priorities messed up. This is something I’ve been struggling with a little. When I came south this year, my intent was to love. Of course, I wanted to love Dad by taking care of him, but I also wanted to love the people in the community where I live by doing my newspaper bit, singing in the choir, taking pictures, and by learning to work the sound systems. It was all going to well, until Dad took a turn for the worse and I pulled out of everything. I felt guilty, and therefore a little angry, because I was trying to do good, trying to love, and now I can’t.
          I know, Dad is the priority. He needs to be. I'm not complaining, but Dad being a priority doesn’t stop part of me from struggling with it. You may face the same dilemma. Setting priorities doesn’t reduce the pull of the things with lower priorities. Sometimes, it has the opposite effect. The other things demand more.
          As we consider our goals for next year, where will loving God, and loving our neighbor as ourselves fit into the list? How will we keep them in their rightful place? It would do us all good to prepare for other things to demand more, and to prepare our response to those demands.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more