Sunday, June 6, 2021

Don't Sweat the Temporal Stuff

One thing we discussed in Sunday School today was some instructions God gave to the early saints. Mostly, He gave them the call to do missionary work, and He told them where to go and instructed them to travel quickly, but He wasn't too particular about how they got there, whether they traveled by road or by river, whether they bought their watercraft or made their own, whether they used horses or mules or wagons or not. He told them where to go and what to do, but He wasn't too picky about how they got there.

As we reviewed these instructions, it seemed clear to me that God seemed more concerned with spiritual matters, like the missionary work moving forward quickly, and less concerned with secular matters, like exact modes of transportation. With His eternal perspective, God may not put so much focus onto things that won't ultimately matter in the long run. So maybe we shouldn't either.

Maybe we should learn to pay more attention to spiritual matters and matters of eternal consequence and worry less about mundane, everyday things. It may not ultimately matter which tie or dress we wear on any particular day. It may not matter exactly how we travel or what route we take. Even some of the bigger questions, like what we study in college and what we do for a living, may not matter much, eternally. Instead of worrying about matter of merely temporal significance, perhaps we should place more of our focus on matters of eternity.

We've all heard the advice to not sweat the small stuff, but we should remember that, from the perspective of eternity, anything that is merely temporal is small.

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