Jesus Christ Our Priority
As summer winds down and we begin to prepare for another school year, I’d like for us to reflect on our priorities. Greg McKeown in his book “Essentialism” points out the word “priority” was introduced into the English language in the 1400s and was singular. It wasn’t until the 1900s that the word was used in its plural form, “priorities.” Today, the word priority is used to describe what is most important in our life, but we typically talk about our multiple priorities. We attempt to make many things of upmost importance. It feels like many of our priorities conflict with one another, competing for our time, energy, and resources.
Perhaps, we would do better if instead of thinking about all of our many priorities, we just focused on our priority, Jesus Christ! When we focus on Christ as the one and only priority in our life all other things fall into place as they should. Paul’s statement in Philippians 1:21 shows what having Christ as the priority looks like, “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
We now stand at the door of a new school year, routines will be changing, new activities will begin, and our schedules will be full. However, let us not lose sight of our priority. Let us keep Christ number one and not let anything become even close to as important in our hearts. When we have opportunities to meet with our brothers and sisters to study God’s Word, let’s take advantage of the opportunities. It’s hard to say Jesus is the priority in our life when we allow other “priorities” to get in the way of spending time in His Word with the church He died to create.