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The Important and the
Trivial
I am amazed when I consider the
amount of effort and emphasis I have put on some things that turned out to
trivial. In a recent Reader's Digest story, an accountant was horrified to
find that his wife, who had been paying the bills, had been rounding off
all the check entries to the nearest dollar. After spending untold hours
trying to correct her method, the accountant found that seven years of
entering dollars only had thrown off the bank balance by a total of 16
cents! I thought that quite amusing; my wife found it hilarious, at least
partly because she could see some correlation to periods of my own
intensity relating to our finances.
It's Relative
It's not that we can point to one or two things as important and ignore
all the rest. Various issues arise that demand our attention, even if only
briefly. In fact, there are few things that could be considered
universally unimportant, even though they may be of no interest to me
whatsoever. As I thought about this subject, however, it occurred to me
that the issue is not the absolute importance of things, but how they
relate to others. No one would deny the importance of keeping track of
your bank balance, but what effort is warranted to ascertain the specific
amount of a check written seven years ago?
It's also a relationship
thing
It would be one thing if keeping things in balance only involved spending
several hours of effort in what proved to be trivial. But the toll more
often is paid in our relationships. What hurt do I inflict on
another just to prove that I was right? Or, to get personal, how many
angry words have I thrown at my wife in an effort to prove my masculinity?
How many wounds have you inflicted on a friend or spouse over some issue
that you later saw as utterly trivial? You would probably agree that, if
we start to rank things in order of importance, relationships must come
high on the list. After all, there are few physical things that are going
to last a lifetime, but the best relationships, the ones that prove to be
the most rewarding and satisfying, are the ones that take time to
cultivate. As we prepared to move from Kansas to Texas several years ago,
my wife began to realize with greater force the value of the friendships
she was leaving behind, and commented, "You don't make 20-year friends
overnight."
With distinctions
But we would also agree that all relationships are not equally important.
This is not an excuse to abuse any relationship, but just a realization
that it is necessary to establish priorities in the time and effort we
spend in building relationships with others. So, in separating the
important from the trivial, relationships are more important and lasting
than things, while some relationships are more important that others.
The marriage relationship
Family psychologists tell us that in evaluating the effects of
relationships on our lives, the happiest, healthiest people are those in
loving marriage relationships. This doesn't exclude other friendships, of
course, but emphasizes the necessity of prioritizing how we relate to
other people. If we look beyond the marriage relationship to its origin,
we see a Creator who purposed that the bonding of a man and a woman give
us a picture into the relationship that He wants to have with all mankind.
The divine pattern
You see, God could have made man to reproduce in any manner He chose, but
His plan was for one man to commit to one woman for all their lives, and
in so doing, come to understand the divine pattern that marriage
represents. This can come about as we find ourselves expecting our
marriage partner to fulfill a need he or she wasn't designed to fill. God
means for us to recognize that there is a relationship even greater than
human marriage, a relationship with Him which includes no rivals. It is
part of the divine mystery how a man and woman can commit to each other
while at the same time committing themselves to God eternally, yet each
part complements the other.
Beginning the relationship
A man and woman enter into marriage as two mutually flawed people, but
not so with our relationship to God. We come as sinful man before his
perfectly holy and righteous creator. As such, we have no basis or means
to communicate with Him as He intended us to communicate. But God provided
a means to bring us together by sending His own Son to earth to take the
punishment our sin deserves. When we agree with God about both the
necessity and adequacy of that provision, He implants His Spirit within
us, allowing us to know Him in a new and personal way. The gift of His
indwelling Spirit is the down payment on His plan to make us
His forever. The Bible tells us of
a day when all who are so related to God will be honored guests at a
heavenly banquet celebrating our eternal marriage relationship to His Son,
Jesus Christ. But we have the privilege of beginning that relationship
here and now, a relationship that has the promise of making all human ties
purer and sweeter. Knowing God as He intended allows us to become who He
meant us to be in our human relationships, because our priorities are
finally in line with His divine plan. Seek the truly important, and begin
to learn to evaluate all else from a divine perspective. |