"This is Important"

Most of the blogworthy images I find on Facebook were shared by my sister, Sariah, including this one.

Yesterday, I posted a list of suggestions to improve happiness, but I wasn't trying to stress anyone out by it or suggest that you had to do all ten of those things all the time to be happy. There are lots of people, even within the church, that tells us about things that we "need" to do. Some of those things actually are important. Others, you don't really need to worry about.

I mentioned an object lesson in my blog post yesterday. I think I'll share it now. The instructor had a large, glass jar, several small rocks, a jar of dirt, and a jar of water. He put the rocks in the glass jar and asked us if we thought the jar was full. Then he added dirt, and then water to the jar, so that all the space in the glass jar was filled. This was at the beginning of a lesson on time-management, following a lesson on priorities, so almost everyone thought of the moral that if you do the important things first, you'll still have time for all of the "good" things, plus all the other things that you actually want to do.

But there wasn't. There wasn't enough room in the jar for all of the dirt the instructor had brought. One student interpreted this to mean that it doesn't really matter how many "good" things don't get done as long as we do all of the important things. I'll take the thought one step further by saying that it doesn't really matter if some of the important things don't get done, as long as we take care of the things that are most important.

But here's where things get tricky. The world, the church, and even this blog talk about a lot of things that are "important." There are so many things that are "important" that we can't possibly do them all. So, what then? Are we failures because we can't do all of the important things that we're supposed to do? I don't think so. I think that the world, and maybe sometimes even the church, puts too much importance on things that are actually only "good." The church gives us lots of good ideas of things that we "should" do. Are we bad people for not doing all of them? Or, to rephrase the question, would God want us to feel like we're bad people for not doing all the things that we're "supposed" to do? I personally don't think so. I think that God would be patient with our limited human abilities, and He'd be encouraging, as long as we're trying to put the most important things first.

But again, we come to the question: What are the most important things? I think that the answer to that question is mostly up to us. There are a lot of things we could be doing, and God certainly has some idea about what would be best to do, but He lets us choose where we place our priorities, and I think that as long as they aren't totally against His plan for us, He'd give our efforts His blessing. We probably aren't able to do ALL of the important things right now, and I think God will let us choose which of the important things are most important.

God doesn't want us to stress out about all the good things that we can't do. It's up to us to follow our hearts, do what we feel is most important, and not worry about everything else. There will be lots of good things that we can't get done, and there may even be some "important" things that we don't get to. But we decide what's most important in our lives. After that, the other things don't matter quite as much.