that was when i ruled the world...

i haven't shaved in quite some time. and i don't care.



here is something to ponder. we often talk about "ordering our priorities." as if they aren't already ordered. what we should instead refer to this activity as is "writing out what we know should be our priorities, in the proper order, and then comparing them to the current order. and then realize that we are doing it all wrong." and not only this, but the manner in which we organize our list is generally all wrong as well. we tend, as is normal for Americans, to list them vertically, with the most important (or so we deem) priority finding its place at the top and so on. in fact, we would be much more correct to describe our priorities in a more circular fashion with a main cog in the middle and with things sprouting out from that center.

The reason for this orbital pattern becomes immediately evident when we really step back and look at our lives. the simple listing of priorities often carries with it a sort of time-value connotation by which we say that "Number One Priority" should be that to which we give the most time. Well, i find that most people would list "family" somewhere above career, and yet i am aware of no one still working about whom could be said that more time was spent with his/her family than at their respective career. Additionally, it is more fitting--in my opinion--that priorities should be organized much like our solar system, because everyone, at their core, has that one thing which really drives them. everyone. It follows then that that "drive" whatever it is, cannot stand alone simply at the top of some list. It must impact the rest of the priorities that make up a person. I think that this type of organization gets rid of the somewhat circular difficulty of trying to use time as the main unit to measure our priorities.

For the Christian, God cannot be measured with time. The importance of God in our lives cannot effectively be measured by how much time we spend reading His words, nor by how much time is spent in church with others who profess the same beliefs as ourselves. The importance of God in our lives is quickly seen by whether we have placed Him as the cog of our lives upon which we deal with family and friends and careers and everything else accordingly. It is a very freeing yet also very scary thing, i think. For it means that your life is no check list, but it also means that your whole life is affected. Everything you do depends on that center cog. If a spoke becomes lose, the whole wheel is affected.

But the beautiful thing with this organization is that time is not compartmentalized. It is just focused. And if it is not focused on God as the central axis of your whole being, then it is focused on something else. We all have one thing there, and it may change from time to time, but a man cannot serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other or he will love the one and hate the other.