I've been thinking a lot about priorities.
I like making lists so priorities are something that I think about a lot. When I have several things I need to get done, I make a list with each item on it and then I can begin to decide which is most important and then attack it.
When it comes to life, this approach is not so simple.
I have 24 hours in a day... 23 hours and 56 minutes if we're talking Sideral days (look it up). Some of those hours are taken up by mandatory things: sleeping, eating, Starcraft 2 (kidding), etc... So, if we subtract 8 hours of sleep and 2 hours for eating, we're left with 14 hours for me to spend as I please.
On an average day, I have 3 hours of class, so that brings me down to 11 hours. Subtract my travel time (to and from class) and that brings me down to about 10 hours.
What I do with those 10 hours is what I've been thinking a lot about lately. I've heard a quote that goes something like this... "I am afraid that at the end of my life, God will hold all the things I've done in his hand and blow away all the things that were not for him and nothing will be left." Maybe you are more familiar with the wheat and the chaff illustration. When wheat is threshed, the heavier kernels of wheat stay while the lighter chaff is blown away by the wind leaving behind what is desired... the wheat.
I've been thinking about what would be left behind if you blew all the "chaff" out of my life. Somedays it really scares me. I think about how I did so little or how I did nothing at all. I think about how I spent 3 hours playing Starcraft 2, an hour looking at a friend's pictures on Facebook, 2 hours watching SportsCenter (twice), an hour in the gym working out. See how quickly that time adds up?
I recently heard a quote from a guy named Jim Elliot. He said, "He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." It is one of my hopes and dreams that at the end of every day I can say, I gave up everything for the sake of Christ. I want to give up the chaff. I want to keep the wheat.
I think these lyrics sum it up well:
So put your faith,
In more than steel,
Don't store your treasures up,
With moth and rust,
Where thieves break in and steal.
Pull the fangs,
From out your heel.
We live in but a shadow of the real.
Of Dust And Nations by Thrice
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1 comment:
Great comments.
Here is one of my favorite quotes of Jim Elliot:
“Christians today haven’t got what the New Testament calls ‘singleness of heart.’ They haven’t got one constant desire. And that one desire I will name ‘the lust for God.’ I am using the word ‘lust’ rather than the love for God because the phrase ‘love for God’ has become almost trite. It is the lust for God that we are missing. You lust only after those things that you desire intensely.
“The lust for God is the thing that should characterize a Christian. Not that you’ve attained. Not that you’ve arrived. The apostle Paul says, ‘I haven’t arrived. I don’t pretend to have apprehended. But I press toward the mark.’ Paul had huge desires, and that’s what we ought to have.” (Jim Elliot: A Christian Martyr Speaks To You, page 25)
May God bless you and your ministry for Him.
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