What is Your Focus?

 

In the early morning I awoke and thought about my past.  I remembered all the stock trades I had made, and the time I had spent analyzing stocks.  Overall, I made money.  As I lay there, I couldn’t recall what happened to it.  So much time spent; so little worth-remembering results.

I had a dream about a woman who was at a support group meeting.  She was explaining why she had to have an abortion.  Everyone there understood.  And then, at the end of her touching story, she said: “And then I had another.”  And she was given a card with a number to call.  The number ended in “PARDON”.  She was deeply sorry for that first sin that she felt compelled to do, but she kept on doing it.

Repeat sins are so easy; that is why we repeat them.  We don’t think to repent of them.  They hurt God, however, just the same.  And no one says they are sorry.  Sins are a such a casual focus of our lives we don’t think to repent, but like my stock market focus, if we really thought about them, we probably wouldn’t see the major benefit of doing them.  They were done more out of habit then need or desire. 

I was focused on money; the woman was focused on casual sex.  Many/most people focus on things they want to do, without ever thinking much about why.  Often it is to become recognized by others; sometimes it is to please our senses.  We often think we are doing just what everyone else is doing.  But if we only focus on doing what everyone else is doing, we are not realizing that we are unique beings.  We look in the mirror and see someone different; it is obvious.  But if we are unique, different, why?  Do we ask that?  The only one who could answer that question is the one who created us, because He created us for a reason, a unique reason. 

It’s kind of like, if I were a creator, and I created a beautiful gold cup for placing on the altar.  Certainly, you could take that cup and play in the sand.  You could point out that many people are playing in the sand with cups.  But what do you think I, the creator of that unique cup, would think of your playing? 

We so easily find some focus in life and continue doing it.  We may look back at some point, as I did on my stock trades, and wonder why I so valued doing that with my life.  Or we may look back and see we were in some habitual sin we just continued --- because we could.  But we so rarely consider why we were created; what was the purpose the creator intended for us unique beings.  I think if we did, we would see more clearly the sins we commit and how we are failing our creator, and what He probably thinks.  And we might see, if we spoke to Him, why He created us, uniquely, now.

And what we should focus on, which would please Him.  And we might remember all the parables Jesus told of people who disappointed Him, and what happened to them, from the vineyard lessees to the man who wasted talents.  We were made for a reason, a unique purpose.  It should be our focus.  As a head start on figuring out that focus, we should remember what Jesus said WAS the primary purpose for lives in general:  to love God and to love neighbor ----- not self or what we feel good doing.  He exampled love to the nth degree, and He chose to die on a cross for love of God and neighbor. 

What is your focus?