Divine Priorities

Confession: I have been secretly envious of other people's priorities for years. My friend Glen holds his work-outs as a high priority. So high that he recently paid $15 for a 24 hour membership to a gym when he was out of town. I wish I could be like that. A pastor I know named David puts a high priority on writing sermons. He spends a minimum of 20 hours each week preparing his sermon. I don't. Another friend of mine named Jonathan puts a high priority on his food intake. He refuses to eat fast food. Period. I wish I had that kind of fortitude.

But I must be fair to myself and state that I have made a radical shift in my priorities over the last year. For years, my top three priorities went like this: 1) My Work in the Church, 2) My Self, and 3) My Family. A little over a year ago I started to shift those priorities. I was talking with a friend about this change a couple of weeks ago. She asked me how my priorities are ordered now. (I think the conversation was initiated by my recent post on Hear the Yawp called "Keeping Busy.") At any rate, I answered her with an atypical straightforward order: 1) My Family, 2) My Self, and 3) My Work in the Church. The answer felt good. Something seemed right about it. For years I have wanted that order, but for the first time, it was true. Then my friend asked me this question: "Where is God in that order?"

Her question got me thinking. According to what we've been taught in churches, it is a great question. The Church teaches that our priorities are supposed to be "1) God, 2) Family, and 3) Church." I answered her with a question, "What does it mean to put God first?" She replied, "You make it a point to spend time with God everyday." No shock there! After all, it's what we've been taught. "If your relationship with God is your top priority, you spend time with him everyday."

But that doesn't make sense to me. Really "good Christians" will spend about 15 minutes either at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day reading their Bible or praying. The "Super-Christians" might spend 30 minutes per day, and the truly sanctified might actually spend one hour per day praying or reading the Bible. That just doesn't make sense to me. Reading Lamentations for 30 minutes out of my 24 hour day makes God my #1 priority? How is that possible? I spend three times that each day eating! I sometimes spend four times that amount of time returning e-mails! And I spend fourteen to sixteen times that amount of time each day sleeping! If priorities are measured in time, I'm not sure my relationship with God would even register.

I'm not so sure our "time with God" or our "relationship with God" needs to be charted on our timed scale of priorities. What would it look like if God wasn't one of the things on my to-do list? A place-holder on my list of priorities? What would happen if God was not the most important among many priorities? What would happen if my relationship with God, instead of being compartmentalized on my priority graph, began to influence and infiltrate every other thing that is on my priority list - family, work, exercise, nutrition, friends, etc? Would that change the way I live? Would that change the way we live?