That’s a famous quote.  I read years ago that it was the motto of the French Foreign Legion but Google doesn’t indicate such but in any case I’m going to use it in a different way for this post.

Our lives have so many moving parts.  Getting to your job on time, performing well, picking up your kids from school, going home and getting dinner ready, getting ready for bed, then getting up the next morning and doing it all over again.  And again.  And again.  Ad infinitum.

Oh yeah, and the thousand other  things which arise anew each day, each week, each month and must be addressed, often immediately.  And on and on and on it goes.

But amid all the fun and sometimes chaos of one’s usual daily routine, I just want to humbly remind all of us – especially myself – to keep the main thing the main thing, and actually in this life it’s not just the main thing, it’s the ONLY thing that really  counts.

Eternity.  The life to come.

Nothing else compares.  Not jobs, not hobbies, and not even family.  That’s right, not even family.  As the Lord Jesus Himself clearly stated:

• “ANYONE who loves their father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.  And whoever does not take his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me.  Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:37-39)
• “If ANYONE comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” (Luke 14:26)

The entire Bible makes it crystal clear that He said this in relative  (no pun intended =) not absolute  terms, meaning that God of course doesn’t want us to hate ANYONE but absolutely to hate everyone – including our very own life… especially  our very own life – and everything IN COMPARISON TO our love for and devotion to Him.

Is family important?  Exceedingly.  How about one’s job?  Very.  How about even one’s hobbies or pastimes?  Yes.  But the Bible’s and Jesus’ succinct point here is that COMPARED TO eternity, ALL of these things are meaningless.  In other words, the ONLY thing that really matters in this life is what actions we take and decisions we make regarding the life to come.

It’s so EASY to find our focus wandering away from Him and onto these other “moving parts” in our daily lives.  Away from the vertical and onto the horizontal.  Away from the spiritual and onto the physical.  Away from the things which are unseen and onto the things which are seen (2 Corinthians 4:18).  Away from the intangible things that cannot be shaken and onto the tangible things that can (Hebrews 12:27-29).  Away from God and onto man.  Away from matters of eternity and onto the matters of this very temporary life, which the Bible rightly compares to a mere breath of air on a cold morning (James 4:14).

How important it is – EVERY DAY, every HOUR – to keep putting our focus and priority BACK ONTO God and the Bible and eternity, because the human mind, per its “default” setting, will just naturally wander away from such.  While Bible memory is the best and most effective tool for this, simply reminding each other regularly is a close second.
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