What is important?

An experience from my working years....

By 7 AM each morning I try to be in the shower, to get to work by 7:30 +/-. As a general rule I'm up 2 to 3 hours before this, when I can do some Bible reading, pray some, decide on the important things for the day, and get some work done that I cannot do during the press of daily activities. This is my most productive time of the day and I try not to use it for busy work.


One day last week, during this early time, I turned on my computer and it would not start, PANIC! All of my recent work was locked in that computer, and no backup! I had spreadsheets, letters, project designs, sales presentations, program source code, on and on .... and some of it was due that day!

I've had my hard drive quit before and I've been days and weeks getting a set of working tools back on it again.

When I began to realize I could loose hours and hours of work, and that I could not be ready for the commitments of the day ahead, my priorities began to change.

I thought back over the past few weeks trying to remember what I had done that was so important that I did not have time to do a backup, a five minute job!

I could not think of a day that I could not have squeezed in another five minutes for a backup. Those five minutes would have saved me days of work, some of the things on the hard drive would never be replaced. But now it was to late!

With that nauseating sick panic feeling in the pit of my stomach the difference between what had seemed urgent and what was really important began to settle in. It took a tragedy to get my attention!

Much of life is like that morning. I get focused on the urgent and neglect the important. I focus on the immediate events as if they will last for ever. But a car wreck, death in the family, stormy time with a loved one, sudden sickness of a friend, empty bank account, major storm, ... can change life's priorities and help us get the important back in focus.

This event caused me to reflect more on the quote in a previous blog, " ... all that God's Son is and does marks him as God. He regulates the universe by the mighty power of his command. He is the one who died to cleanse us and clear our record of all sin, and then sat down in highest honor beside the great God of heaven."

It does not take a tragedy to get Jesus to keep his mind on the important and keep the urgent in proper perspective. He is regulating the universe (and our current world events) by the mighty power of his command.

He died to "clear our record of all sin...", therefore I can ask his forgiveness for giving attention to the urgent and ignoring the important.

There is no one else that has come back from the dead claiming to have cleared my record of all sin! The relationship we have with a perfect God, that loves us enough to pay all our spiritual debts, is the most important and exciting thought of all time!

My least productive days are the ones where I focus on the urgent (those things that seem big from my prospective) and ignore the most important - giving Jesus some of my attention to reflect on His greatness and for what He thinks is important.
When I have run out of sunsets I will leave the cares of this world to spend eternity with Him. I don't want to be a stranger when I arrive. That is important!


P.S. After 10 - 15 tries I did get my computer started, and the first thing I did was make a backup!