VALUES
We must all learn to distinguish between the essential and nonessential in life. There are immediate values and ultimate values. A sign of wisdom is knowing how to value things just as they deserve.
Our trouble is two fold. First, we usually measure things by material rather than spiritual values. Second, we tend to measure things by time rather than eternity.
Material things are important. God gives us all things to enjoy. But spiritual things are more important. Set your affection on things above. Colossians 3.2. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Matthew 6.20. It is always a matter of priority! Bodily exercise is needful and important, but Godliness (spiritual exercise) is even more important, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. I Timothy 4.8.
You’ve heard the old saying, It won’t matter one hundred years from now. That’s truer perhaps than we realize. We need to take the long view in setting our priorities. What is most important in the long run, one hundred or one thousand years from now? Don’t lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. How foolish to spend our lives on things that perish with using and give no thought to the spiritual welfare of the soul in eternity. In the final analysis, it won’t be a matter of what we have come to possess, but rather what we have come to be.
—Charles Cash
Siloam Springs, AR
