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Pastoral Points
I’ve always been a pretty organized person. I’m generally neat and tidy. I’m usually on top of my schedule and to-do list, though they regularly get unrealistically ambitious and have to be trimmed back. I like routines and stability, mainly because it means things are getting taken care of often enough that I can detour from the norm without my life sinking into chaos.
In short, I appreciate good order. It makes life peaceful and frees up my mental energy for higher thinking and creativity. When you’re stuck in survival mode, it’s tough to reach beyond your basic needs. These outward habits, helpful though they can be, are not the most important form of order. There is an even more profound goodness that comes from internal order.
Essayist Simcha Fisher, writing for the Australian publication, The Catholic Weekly, says, “Order doesn’t sound like much until you’ve lived with profound disorder, or come to recognise how much disorder makes up your life. Order is everything. Not tidiness or rigidity or devotion to routine, but the true and right weighting of all the thoughts, words, and deeds that define us.” Order is not just about making life run smoothly, although orderly external habits do support an internal order. Chiefly, order is about giving the proper weight to all the various components of our lives. It’s First Commandment stuff. God tells us that we are to have no other gods before him (Exodus 20:3), and Jesus reminds us what this means: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength (Mark 12:30).
Order is simply about keeping first things first, and being intentional about how we use our time, energy, money, attention, and other resources. Fisher continues: “If we have not fixed Jesus as the immovable centre, with everything else remaining negotiable, then there can be no order. Our daily lives constantly try to disarrange us, make the wrong things seem important, waste our energy on foolish or harmful or trivial ideas, and take our attention away from what is lasting and will sustain us.”
If we let ourselves be pulled along by the whims of the culture around us, or by a need to be like everyone else, then we have lost sight of the first things. We become puppets whose lives are just happening to us, rather than agents who are shaping our own lives with purpose.
Christians are not like everyone else. We have a different center. Don’t let yourself chase distractions that shake up your life into chaos. Fix yourself firmly on what truly matters and anchor yourself in the Lord and his steadfast love.
