The Secret Life

   At the end of the reading for today, I find this saying of Jesus again:

   Matthew 20:16  "So the last will be first, and the first last.” (ESV)

   I thought yesterday, after finishing up my thoughts and posting them, about the things that might make a first-place man in my eyes rate much lower on God's scale. It could be the things of his heart, those thoughts and actions, those motives and feelings, that define who he really is. In short, it is the secret things in his life that tell the complete story, the real story.

   There was another verse in the Psalm reading for today that seemed to go along with this idea, Psalm 101:3, which reads:

   "I will not set before my eyes
anything that is worthless."

   A lot of the time, the things that I put before my eyes, the books, the magazines, the Internet, the videos, show who I really am. What I do in secret is the real me.

   So the Psalmist says that he will not waste his time on stuff that does not matter, or even worse than that, those things that will lead him in the wrong direction. There is a lot of "worthless stuff" out there, a lot of it entertaining or fun, but worthless all the same.

   I think of one small example: I like to read books on my Kindle, and so I keep a small backlog of things that sound interesting to me. Over the past couple of months, Amazon has sent me an email with the "Kindle book of the day Deal", a deeply discounted book that I can buy, sometimes for less than one dollar. I bought a few that sounded good just for some light reading before bedtime, but after getting into them, found they were really trash. I could see no redeeming value in them, even though it was not for study, but just to get sleepy. I still look at what they offer each day, but my purchases are researched before I buy, and I only read what I think will benefit me. There is enough good stuff out there to last me for several lifetimes, so why waste my time on junk.

   I believe the same holds true for movies, videos, magazines as well as articles and images on the Internet. If I am to be judged by how I spend my time on earth, let me be wise in decisions concerning all that I do. The outward life as well as the secret one.

   After all, the bottom rung on the ladder is already filled to overflowing with "first-class wannabes"