keeping the main thing the main thing

"The most important advice I can give to you, is keeping the main thing the main thing," the President of SI recommended to us on our last night before leaving Visalia.

Interesting.  How can missionaries have trouble focusing on "the main thing?"  I found myself questioning in my head while listening to Dave.  In my current job back home in NY, sometimes the farthest thing on my mind seems to be Christ.  But, that's ok, right?  I mean I'm not in ministry yet....right?  And surely once I'm in the field devoting my life to Him, I will be focused on Him, all the time?

Fast forward to today.  Sometimes I think about things I shouldn't, as we all do.  Perhaps I'm a contemplative sort.  Maybe that's why this whole blog thing works for me.  I have always kept a journal.  Anyways.  I have the blessing and the curse of working with and against death day in and day out.  And today I got sad.  Not sad because of my patient's failing health, but because perhaps they missed "the main thing."

I don't understand the point of life without Christ.  I don't understand how there can be peace in the depths of someones soul.  Peace that consumes your entire being even when everything external to your body is in shambles.  Or joy that allows you to travel through sorrow's waters but stay afloat.  Or hope that helps you look to the next thing.  Or when all else fails, and you're standing at deaths door to not accept the love that we have freely been given, to walk through the door from this world to the next and know it only gets better.

As I walk through this world, my eyes trying to be open to Christ's love, I worry about those around me.  I wonder what He is doing to try and bring them home to Him.  How they are ignoring Him?

Then I think back to Dave's words.  Even missionaries lose focus.  We all become so consumed by our daily life.  By the next thing on our to do list.  We lose sight of the point.  The reason we exist.  Keeping the main thing the main thing.

I pray that we all remember the gift of life we were given.  That we remember who is in charge and should be the focus.  There is only one who we serve.  Focus on the main thing and everything will fall into place.