What’s your context?
I watched a movie tonight that talked about perspective in life. At the beginning the main character has made a mistake that has cost his company $972 million and he thinks that his life is over. His journey to discover the true value in life takes him from the point of despair to his relatives in a small town in Kentucky and then on a road trip back to Oregon. Through all of this he learns that his “perfect job” had been empty of meaning and true life was in the small, seemingly simple stuff.
I liked this theme in this movie because it seems that so many of us in this world, and perhaps especially in America, are “chasing after the wind.” There is tremendous pressure to be successful in the world’s eyes and if we’re not careful, it can strip many years off of our lives. It’s not until we look back on everything it’s taken and see the wreckage in our wake that we realize the full danger of this drive. Let us not get lose perspective on the wrong things.
As I see it, the only way to truly live rightly is to have a proper hierarchy of priorities. Only if Christ is first and foremost in all that we do can we properly see how to care for our family. Only if our family is next can we properly see how to support them. And it goes on from there. But it’s so easy to mix these up. If family comes before God then we end up making them an idol and we don’t love them out of the love that God gives us. God designed us to work in contexts. In the context of being of child of God, much becomes clear about ourselves and how we relate to others. In the context of being a child, a spouse, or a parent, much becomes clear about how we relate to the world.
For myself, I know that right now I could be content living anywhere in the world no mater what the living conditions were because everywhere I go would be in the context of being a child of God. As I continue to live, more will become clearer, especially as I marry and have children, but the foundational perspectives and contexts that I am realizing now will remain. Praise God for His care and interest in our lives, for we would be nothing without Him!