Focus...

No matter how you cut it, as a society we've really screwed up our focus. If we were to write down those things that worry us today, seal it in an envolope, and open it in a year how relevant do you think those things would be? Would they even be remembered? We worry today about so many temporal unimportant things, for our trust is in ourselves, in our things, rather than in the One who can sustain us, not just in the here and now, but for eternity.
We don't often think about concepts like eternity, for they are infinite and our minds are finite and unable to grasp the enormity of what terms like infinity and eternity and nothingness mean. But try wrapping your mind around Eternity for a moment. Let's say you've got a boulder, a thousand feet high, a thousand feet deep, and a thousand feet wide. Starting now, and once every thousand years, you drip a drop of water on it. When that boulder has been completely eroded by your water Eternity will still be in it's infancy...
We're like somone who picks up a shattered mirror and looks at their reflection. Though the image is fractured and distorted we think we see clearly, that the image is accurate. It becomes our focus, and our focus is wrong... We worry about things, we save and accumulate, we try to hedge against a future we cannot know... Our world can be turned completely around in a heartbeat: someone runs a red light and you're there, or a wire shorts out and your home is gone, or you hear the words. "I'm sorry, it's malignant." We cannot know what the future holds, yet we work so hard to cover "every" contingency, and still we fail...
So where should our focus be, if not on the uncertainty of this life? Perhaps we should focus on what will affect our eternity rather than the temporal. Our Father promises to take care of us today so we can concentrate on what is important. Luke 12:24 tells us to, "consider the ravens. They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn: and yet God feeds them. How much more valuable are you than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all record the story of the rich man who wanted to know how to inherit eternal life. He kept the commandments, did all that the world considered good and right, and wanted to know if that was enough. Jesus told him to sell his "bling" and give it to the poor. And the man went away sad, for he was very wealthy.
It's not that being wealthy is wrong, nor is owning things wrong, but it is wrong when your things own you. It's all about the heart, the focus. When things become more important than Jesus then your focus is wrong. Pure and simple. Things come and go, but Jesus is eternal. What we do in the eyes of this world- status, success, wealth- have no bearing on our eternal soul. God looks at the heart, for where our treasure is there our heart will be also (Luke 12:34). God wants us to treasure Him, not things. If we learn to get our priorities straight, and our trust placed correctly, then God will cover all our needs, wants, and desires. In Malachi Chapter 3, verse 10 the Lord is literally pleading with us for our faithfulness and trust. He says, "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the Lord Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it."
So with a promise like that why don't we trust Him? Pehaps we don't want to admit our view is fractured and distorted... As Judge Judy so eloquently stated, "Beauty fades, but dumb is forever"...