This poster and others like it stop me in my tracts. When it morphed onto my memory screen Thursday evening, it gave me pause. It reads---One hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I live in, or the kind of car I drive. However, the world will be different because I was important in the life of a child.
Well, duh! Here I am with nearly sixty years under my belt and still need to be reminded what is important in this life as opposed to what is merely urgent. To be completely accurate, it wasn't the poster that made me hit the pause button. Rather, it was the presence of our grandson John Lewis Carpenter, visiting for the weekend. Listening to this two-year old sing his ABC's, and do his ciphers (as Uncle Jed Clampett used to say), watching his movements, and interpreting his sentences ---these all combined to call the poster forth from the the cellar of my consciousness and ponder the priority thing again. This is a tap on the shoulder for all of us, the gentle reminder that setting and keeping priorities is a life-long pursuit, a valued discipline that we never out-grow, a practice that intrudes on every season of life.
Life's urgencies scream for our attention. Many of us live in personal triage most of the time, slotting the emergencies according to their perceived severity. The old saying that the "squeaky wheel gets the grease" is basically true, vividly depicting the mechanics of ranking the claims on our resources. Urgencies usually win the day because they are either loud or potentially messy. The hatchet in the head trumps the toothache just about every time.
As a result, things that matter often get relegated to the back of the line. Sadly, even those of us with some mileage must be reminded of the subtle distinction between what is urgent and what is really important. Of course, many of life's urgencies matter too, you know, like work, and sleep, and health, and leisure, and the economy, and who's in the White House, and what's for dinner, and line after line of minutiae, commitments, obligations, and preferences. Let's not trivialize all of the competing claims on our resources. A toothache is troublesome even if it's not getting blood all over the place.
The key is possessing a scale with which to weigh the various items, and then having the discipline to move the light weight stuff back and the weightier matters to the front. Sounds simple doesn't it. But, of course, it is not. Wisdom is the deal here. You see, we have to have wisdom to weigh things accurately. And, wisdom is, guess what?---decided on a BIblical scale. What is wise is that which reflects the values of heaven. This, of course, is the sticking point, using the wrong scales to appraise the value of things.
The weigh stations can be deceptive too. What may seem important may actually weigh differently on the wrong set of scales, their value being inflated because the scales are unbalanced. That is why the first decision in priority setting involves the measuring devices you use to rate things. Our world-view, determined by faith in Jesus Christ, our dependence on the eternal Word of God, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, should be the scales by which we weigh life's involvements. Everything looks a bit different when viewed through the lens of our Biblical world-view.
Gets kind of involved doesn't it? More than at first thought. All because a precious little boy and the memory of a provocative poster made me take pause and think about what really matters.
Thanks John Lewis. You're right.
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