Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

• Matthew 6:33

“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

• Revelation 2:1-7

“You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first. …
“Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first and we lose both first and second things.”

• C.S. Lewis, God in the Docks (First and Second Things) and Letters: C.S. Lewis, 23 April 1951

I have written about the time that my boss gave me five projects one day, just before lunch.  At the time, I was working about 30-45 minutes away from civilization.  No one went out for lunch, but we had a set time for lunch.  The boss wanted all five projects finished by the end of the day.  All five were priority number one.  All projects were legitimately a two-three day duration type project.  But then again, this was during the period that the group advertised that I could work miracles while you wait, but the impossible might take a little time.

I insisted that he prioritize the projects.  He refused.  They all had to be done that day, before I left.  He would be waiting.

I finished all five projects, in a poor-quality fashion.  I was not proud of any of my efforts, but I had done the impossible that afternoon.  The boss would have an idea what they might look like if he wanted me to press forward to flesh out and pretty up each report.  I took an inch thick layer of freshly printed project reports around the corner.  When I got to the boss’ office, he was not there.  The secretary caught my angry grunt.  She said that the boss had left immediately after talking to me, at least she had not seen him since he told her that he was going to give me some assignments before going to lunch.

When I got back to my cubicle, everyone else was already laughing.  I threw a few unessential things around my small workspace.  Nothing broke, except for my patience with the boss.  I don’t think I ever trusted him after that, not that I had much trust before that point.  And he never approached me about any of those projects.  None of them were his first priority.  None of them were even on his radar.  Maybe someone else asked if our group could …  But I never heard from anyone about those five projects.

As such, I can attest from experience that when you put a second thing before a first thing, you get nothing.  The first thing does not get done and the second thing has no first thing to anchor it.

Maybe it was just a crazy boss giving you busy work.

But the Scriptures above make it clear that God needs to be our first priority, and since God is infinite, is there anything that can be a second priority?  Even when we use the usual litany, the family, the job, the church, the extended family – in no particular order – we see those as seeing God through those things.  We glorify God in those things, and we grow as a Christian in our service toward others.

Hmm.  I think a few non-believer bosses, that I had, saw how my priorities worked, and they did not trust me, even though I usually worked harder than the others in the group.

My family, with the exception of my wife, saw what was in it for themselves.  That filter fell short of recognizing me as another human being much of the time.  As for my wife, when she was getting therapy for PTSD, the therapist said that she had to put herself first in some aspect of her life and she failed in doing so.  There was Jesus as number one and then there were her five grandchildren, two sons, two daughters-in-law, four sisters, and at the time three or four brothers, and then her close church friends.  In other words, I was not in her top twenty, maybe not top thirty, but she did so much for me that I felt like I was in the top ten.  She was that much of a caring person.

But the second Scripture was the letter to the church at Ephesus.  If they did not repent and put first things first, Jesus was going to remove their lampstand.  I wonder about all these churches in my area of SW Pennsylvania that have failed.  Did Jesus come and remove their lampstand?

When you have ever experienced the palpable presence of the Holy Spirit, it is attractive.  There need not be any planned “entertainment” or even any planned order of worship.  It becomes spontaneous.  But that outpouring comes from a lot of prayer, a lot of faith, and a lot of dedication to what is first, and if that first thing is not first, it is as if the lampstand is no longer there.

Let us focus on Jesus Christ.  Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to awaken those around us.  And then we can watch God at work.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.