“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least” Goethe.
It is so easy for us to be caught up in the “thick of thin things” that we spend all our time doing what one man described as “straightening deck chairs on the Titanic.”
There is a humorous account about a ship that was in danger of sinking. The captain ordered the first mate to go below and gather the crew together and do something religious. The first mate reported back to the captain that he had assembled the crew and they had taken up a collection. While we may laugh, this story illustrates that most are at a loss when confronted with a problem only God can solve and how useless it is to be spending time on things that are unimportant.
Are the daily things which matter least keeping us from doing the things that matter most? Do we come to the end of the day and find that we have not done our Bible readings, but have finished the newspaper crossword puzzle? Is our home spic and span, but a sick sister has not been called? Have we neglected to write a letter to someone in isolation, yet we watched a real time-waster on TV?
It would be a rare person indeed who could honestly say that he has never been guilty of this kind of behavior.
So what should we do? We need to keep the goals we want to accomplish vivid in our mind and then ask ourselves if what we are doing is helping us to achieve these goals. By looking at the end and working backwards, we can often see clearly that the things that are consuming our time won’t help us reach our goals.
It is no wonder Paul said, “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” There are a great many things we all do everyday that may be lawful but they are not helpful in bringing us closer to our goals in life.
Jesus said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” He was referring to what we eat and drink and those things with which we are clothed. Jesus knew it is all too easy to be caught up in the thick of these thin things. He knew that if we are not careful, what’s really important in our life, “seeking first the kingdom of God,” can be too easily crowded out while we spend all our time doing that which will have absolutely no lasting value.
Jesus rightly said, “For after all these things do the Gentiles seek.” When we arrive at the judgment seat of Christ, we will not be concerned with the mundane things that took so much of our time. What will matter then will be whether or not we visited “the fatherless and widows in their affliction” and kept ourselves “unspotted from the world.”
If we continually affirm that we want to be in the kingdom of God more than anything else in all the world and measure our daily activities by this yardstick, we will find that it will be much easier to keep the things which matter least from crowding out of our lives the things which matter most.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One