Keep the Important thing the Important thing

Photo by Rick Mortimer

Keeping the important thing the important thing.

There is a graveyard behind my house.  It is a huge graveyard of about one hundred acres and has existed since this city was incorporated about one hundred and fifty years ago.

 Yesterday when I was walking by it I saw graves where the people had died almost one hundred years ago.  Some of those people where old at the time they died and some where not. 

   I tried to imaging what their lives must have been like.  These must have been pioneering people who came to this city when it was young or maybe even still pretty much a wilderness even.  And then I got thinking about what their world was like for them and of all the technology and changes that have come and gone since their deaths.

   You know, they were normal people.  They had issues and pet peeves, and things that gave them pleasure.  They had families and bills to pay and jobs to go to and food to gather.  They had things they cherished and things they hated about their lives.  The had issues.  They had relationships.  They had sadness and happiness come and go in their lives just like I do.  They loved living as much as I do.  They lived and saw other die.  They had their own social circles and valued their friends just like I do.

  But none of those things matter now.  It’s all gone for them.  Their earthly trip is over.  Not one thing matters to those people now except where they are spending their eternity. 

  Think about it.  

The only thing that really matters in our lives is our relationship to God. 

When someone walks past your headstone one-hundred years from now, what are they going to think about the things that you value and place importance on  today?  What are they?  Are you putting a priority in your life on your job?  Politics?  How much money your pension is going to bring?  If your child goes to this school or that school? What your boss thinks about the last report you filed?  Where you are going to vacation this coming summer?   Which hockey team is going to win the Stanley Cup?

    Are these things going to matter down the road to you?  To others?

The only thing that matters in our lives is our relationship to God.  When that is in place, the rest will be added to you.

  What did you do to Praise God today?  Did you ask Him to spend the day with you?  Did you thank Him for bringing you the prosperity that you have and for giving you the good health you enjoy?  Did you thank Him for loving you today and paying the horrid price of the death of His precious Son so that you could know Him today?  Did you thank Him for delivering you from the fear of death and for inviting you over to His house for the next bazillion years of eternity?

What value do you put on God?   Because that is the only thing about you that is going to remain one hundred years from now.  The only thing.

  What value you give God in your life today, is the only thing that is going to remain in the future, because this is what is going to determine where you spend it.

  Keep the important thing the important thing.  That’s what really matters.