In our ‘Little Big Church’ service tonight, J-P talked about filling our lives with important stuff. It’s so easy to fill our time and attention with unimportant things (wealth, TV, computer games, caring about our appearance and so on) and we even let things like bitterness, hatred, anger and the desire for revenge take up so much of our lives. Truly, however, we need to understand that important things must take priority: things like God, love, family and friends, health and wellness, food and water, living with passion, education and so on.
He illustrated this with three jars: the first one, an empty one representing our lives, and then one jar filled with balls to represent important things and one with sand to represent the non-important things.
If we try to fill our empty jar with the non-important things, the balls do not all fit in as well, meaning that important things get left out if we focus on the non-essential. If, however, we prioritise important things, there is room for all the extra ‘stuff’ – this has to be in the right order.
In Matthew 6:31-33, Jesus told us our priority should be to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Rom 12:2 tells us we should not try to live as everyone else does, but should make wise choices in God. This can be hard, but the image of the clock and the compass remind us that we need to use time wisely and be guided and directed by God. If we have things in the right order and don’t get distracted by non-important things, then we can do what God wants us to do and tell everyone about Jesus.