Sorting Out Priorities: First Things First

Now being launched into retirement, somewhat, and finding income at a fixed level, and not enough (is it ever?), began to think about the basic, very basic, things of life.

I turned to Matthew 6:24-34. That first verse there nails most of us. You cannot serve two masters, for one will win your heart and the other will become an unwanted burden. The first of the Ten Commandments is laid out there, clearly.
However, notice that the end of the verse says, “you cannot serve God and mammon! So, mammon can be a master of our lives? Yes, that’s what it says. Wait up, there! What is this “mammon”? Read the rest of the passage.

Mammon is all those things that are basic necessities of life—food, clothing, shelter. (Those who study habits of man would show a rising scale of needs that call for satisfaction, as the lower ones are met, such as security, sexual, social relationships, purpose, power, etc.) We see this in that many times a person of wealth, earned or inherited, desire to enter politics, drawn by the desire for power, for all other needs have been met, or confronted with a seemingly desireable result.

So mammon can displace God in my life? Yet, when one is putting God in first place, and trusting Him for the basic needs for survival, his spiritual life is richer than ever before.Unless, of course, he manages to keep the priority in the right order—all through the rising levels of human need. Recall that Jesus said it is harder for a rich man to get into heaven than a camel going through the eye of a needle? You see the relationship here.

Perhaps that is what is back of the saying, “Don’t ever forget where you came from—you just might return to it.”

One who learns to trust God for the basic needs of live and see Him provide those things regularly is much more able to believe Him for the bigger things ahead.
At the end of the passage, He says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

Things are mammon, and things can root God out of first place in our lives—sometimes, even, because they are so desperately needed.

Gene Lawley
fiddlefax@yahoo.com