June 21: THE FRONT OF THE LINE

I’m sure you have experienced this several times this year: You have been patiently standing in line ready to check out and someone jumps in line in front of you and takes your place. (Probably had more than the 12 items allowed in the Express Line) You bite your tongue and get irritated and mumble under your breath. Or maybe someone has “cut you off” in a Parking Lot and taken your parking place. Its so impolite and crude when someone jumps in front of you and takes your place. Spiritually, I wonder how Jesus feels when we allow someone else to come before Him in our lives? And I don’t mean just at Christmas.
We all need to get our priorities straight and then keep them straight. Someone said “the main thing in life is to keep the main thing the main thing.” That comes by concentration and determination. How about praying before you make your shopping list? How about praying while you are shopping? Better yet, why not start the day with a “Quiet Time” with God in order to get our “spiritual values” lifted to first place? This could keep us from doing something reckless the remainder” of the day and not keep “first things” first.
It is especially terrible what “value system” we sow into our children’s brain when we so easily allow Jesus to get “bumped” out of first place in the home. They hear our statements about Jesus being “first” (which we hear each Sunday at church) but then we let someone “cut-in” on Jesus like a grocery line ‘cut-in” and He has to wait for our attention.
Just examine what has been taking place in your life this summer, before Vacation season really gets serious. It would be too numerous for me to try to mention the challenges of maintaining spirituality in summer. Who really occupies first place? (How many times this Sunday will the weekly Bulletin from your church include reminders for you not to forget your financial support this summer or the church will falter?) Read Philippians 2:6-7 “Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” Jesus deserves first place in your life, all the time. He will not force Himself to be first-in-line in your life, that is a place that you must voluntarily give up. Have you heard the song that says “Jesus won’t play second fiddle in anyone’s band”?

“Knowing You are a Jealous God, Heavenly Father, help us to always
take seriously the Command not to place any god before You. Amen”