Matters of Consequence

"I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman.  He has never smelled a flower.  He has never looked at a star.  He has never loved anyone.  He has never done anything in his life but add up figures.  And all day he says over and over, just like you: 'I am busy with matters of consequence!'  And that makes him swell up with pride.  But he is not a man--he is a mushroom!"  (from The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

  Sometimes the most beautiful truths are written in the language of children.  How often in my own life I lose sight of what is truly important because I'm so caught up in 'matters of consequence' that seem so urgent in the moment.  I lose the importance of loving the person in front of me because I'm so focused on things that demand to be addressed immediately.  Another writer has called this the "Tyranny of the Urgent", and has wisely pointed out that 

"we live in constant tension between the urgent and the important.  The problem is that the important tasks rarely must be done today or even this week [...] But the urgent tasks call for instant action--endless demands pressure every hour and day."  

Urgent tasks seem to be "matters of consequence," and like the red-faced gentleman in The Little Prince, we let ourselves swell up with pride in being so busy and having so many urgent tasks to demand our time.  Urgent tasks will always clamor to be addressed in the moment, and we will feel a fleeting sense of accomplishment in being able to check them off of a to-do list.  We use this sense of achieving and producing to justify to ourselves and others why we are not focusing on what truly matters.  Urgent things are quantifiable, important things are not.  Important things take time, they rarely yield immediate rewards, and they are hard to explain to people.  But it is the important things that have the power to truly impact our lives and the lives of those around us.

When we look at the life of Jesus, we see that he consistently refused to yield to the urgent and instead focused on the important mission his Father had sent him on.  Jesus knew the heart of his Father, and he spent a great deal of time and energy in prayer and meditation before his Father to stay focused on the importance of the things his Father was concerned with.  How much more do we need to be focused on learning the heart of the Father as well!  The urgent will always crowd out the important unless we intentionally focus on Who it is that we serve and what it is that He would have us do.

My pastor recently taught on really taking the time to know Jesus and love Him, because "the degree to which we see Jesus is the degree to which we serve Him."  I can probably figure out things that God sees as important because I grew up in the Church, I read my Bible, and I had John 3:16 memorized years before I actually understood the depth of what it means.  But if I try to follow through with what I understand as being important to God without really seeing and loving Jesus, these eternally important things become mere "matters of consequence" to be ticked off of a checklist, people are essentially objectified into figures to be added up, and I lose all of the love that would have fueled my actions.  And, as Paul has said so eloquently, 

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."  (1 Corinthians 13:1-3, ESV)

All of the things Paul lists are good things, but the actions alone are not the best thing.  The best thing--the important thing--is Love.  How easy it is to lose sight of the important!  Lord, give me the grace to seek Your face and Your heart each and every day.  May I see You and love You more today than I did yesterday so that I may truly focus on the important things You put in front of me today.  I don't want to be a mushroom.