What's Really Important

Do you ever ask yourself what’s really important? Do you ever answer yourself by a changed life – not drastically, but noticeably? Do you catch up on yourself when you said you would do something, or be somewhere and then find that you’ve wandered far from that goal, despite still having a desire to achieve that goal?

It’s fine if you don’t ask those questions or engage in that sort of inner-monologue, we’re not all meant to be that reflective, for some people it’s too much to deal with. I am intrigued by how many people I know have an active life that keeps them busy so that they don’t ever stop to consider these things. They are irrepressible in their zeal to get the job done, whatever it is. Their energy makes them almost indefatigable in their conquest. Yet when life happens as it invariably does with those things that arrest us all of a sudden we’re not prepared to answer those issues, yet have to be forced to develop the capacity to do so or face a miserable time looking to avoid it.

Stuff happens in life that allows me to recognise how attached I am to material things. It is a bit like the songwriter suggests in the inimitable voice of Joni Mitchell – you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. As you may note, I enjoy the pleasures of being able to write and save stuff and publish it online. I love that whole thing and have been tremendously blessed with the resources I’ve gained online whether it’s audio works or pdf files on interesting subjects.

I have thus invested a considerable amount of time on this here ICT equipment and a considerable amount of my creativity and energy. As with anything of this nature, that means the stuff becomes valuable because I’ve invested myself in it. Unsurprisingly hard-drives and computers have become very important to me. Yeah, take me telly. Take me Skybox, take some of my books and other than that there really is not many earthly materials that I have to my name. Touch my hard-drive, though and that becomes an issue. I’m making progress in this area.

I remember not so long ago a friend of mine sought to help me out with some difficulties I was having with my hard-drive and subsequently went and got the thing irreparably damaged. It was like a death in the family. It was as though someone had ripped my heart out because all that time and effort that I had saved and deposited on that hard-drive was just gone. Now that to me was more valuable than money, than jewels, etc. it was me that was gone – or a large part of it.

Sadly that’s not the only time hard-drives have failed me for one reason or another. Yet with each time, it’s as though I’m given a reminder of that question I asked at the top – what is really important in life? What could I not live without?

My friends mean a lot to me, I so appreciate their company and companionship. I remember asking God for friends and now recalling the ones I get to engage with, I’m really grateful for them. Yet I could live without them (not that I’d want to but you get my drift). My daughters are incredibly precious to me, but one day soon as they get older I appreciate there will come a time when they will fly away and have families of their own. Even my wife, herself, the very heart-beat of our family and love of my life has a death contract on her – no it’s not a serious threat by the Mafia, it is the inevitability that we are all destined to die. So I’ve learnt and am learning, whenever I forget and get hung up on things, that the things that are important are the things that last forever. Values of love, peace, justice, hope and faith. More importantly relationships that last forever – the source of all that I enjoy and respect.

My friends and family are vitally important, I know however that when they fail and when hard-drives pass away, the love of Jesus lasts for ever. Now it’s the tricky thing of shaping and moulding my life around that conviction. God help me.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd