Setting Our Priorities Straight
Today you get to take a quiz. Don’t worry, it’s not tough.
Based on the photo of my wife’s grandmother’s back porch, where do you believe the family spent most of their time?
I’ll give you a few seconds.
Got it? If you guessed picking up pecans, you’d be right. Clearly, they spent way more time and effort harvesting pecans than playing tennis. I bet you didn’t have to give it much thought at all.
How did we all get the same answer? (I’m making an assumption we all chose picking up pecans. If you elected playing tennis, this post is for you more than anyone else.) Here are a few clues.
- Four pecan harvesters and one racquet.
- A racquet unused for a long time.
- Well-maintained and continually replenished harvesters.
Our hope for today comes to us quite simply. If we could take a photo of our lives and it shared a story similar to Grandma’s back porch, our priorities would be set straight.
I pray you will not pass over this unassuming instruction from Jesus Himself. When Jesus lived on earth, the Pharisees were constantly trying to test Him and trip Him up. They lived their lives heavily invested in religious rules and regulations—the law. A Pharisee lawyer asked Jesus to pick one of those laws as the greatest.
Can’t you imagine the lawyer giving his peers a sideways glance as he anticipated Jesus being unable to put one law higher than all the others? To the Pharisees, all the laws were important. Jesus didn’t fall for satisfying their hunger to feed their selfish hearts. Instead, He told them about grace. Here’s what He said.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-40, ESV)
Jesus was telling the lawyer it wasn’t about the burden of strictly enforcing a false standard of righteousness. Their focus on man-made rules had become more important to them than a relationship with God.
Like the visual of pecan harvesters compared to the tennis racquet, they needed to set their priorities straight. Consider the clues.
Four pecan harvesters and one racquet.
Jesus reminded the Pharisee to focus on the most important. Loving God and loving each other are more important than anything else we can do. Embracing those relationships will inevitably lead us in living a life of supporting decisions.
A racquet unused for a long time.
Jesus didn’t have to list all the rules the Pharisees enforced to make His point. He simply left them out and gave the lawyer the most important. We should stop doing those things that do not reflect loving God and loving others. Soon our lives will reflect those priorities.
Well-maintained and continually replenished harvesters.
Jesus instructed the lawyer to give God his all. He described it as loving with all your heart, soul, and mind. You can’t have a priority that gets only bits and pieces of you. To love like Jesus described, we have to do even more than merely take care of ourselves. We need to study, learn, and improve. Not so we pursue perfection in rule-keeping, but in order to give our best to God.
If we love God and each other as instructed, we will have lives reflecting priorities set straight. No more striving for perfection. No more wondering if we’ve done enough. Simply free in God’s grace. Free to turn everything over to Him.
Are your priorities set straight?
Today’s feature photo comes from a “photo-a-day” challenge I pursued several years ago. The photo inspires the topic. For me, the posts challenge my creativity, writing discipline, and dependence on God for His message. My prayer is that you find hope in God’s Word, and that you’ll share your hope with others.
