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Sticking to priorities
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
We've all had to establish priorities of one kind or another. In my case, they’ve ranged from training for varsity basketball during high-school summers to saving the environment during my junior year in college.
But as I’ve thought about my priorities more deeply, I’ve realized that what I’ve wanted all along is to experience more of my inherent worth—to have a feeling of purpose and wholeness. What I’ve been after is spiritual—more satisfaction, peace and well-being.
For me, this means developing my relationship with God, divine Spirit—making spirituality my ultimate priority. And one way to do this is to develop qualities that will keep me thinking about life in spiritual terms.
The Bible counsels, “Follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” Each of those qualities played a role when I ran into an obstacle while I was working on my graduate school thesis.
My employer at that time funded my return to grad school, and I was given a work project that could double as my thesis. Things went fine until my employer dropped the project. How could I complete my thesis without it? My employer gave me a related project and suggested I could perhaps make it dovetail with the first one to generate a whole thesis.
I didn't think that would work, and I was pretty upset. But I knew it wouldn’t help to stay that way. I needed to get clear about my priorities again. For one thing, I had to regain clarity about my relation to God and His ability to meet all my needs. Under His care, no one can become a victim of material circumstances—not me or my employer. Also, I couldn’t let this become a situation where I was praying for things to work out according to my personal plan. What I really wanted was God’s plan for both me and my employer.
So I prayed along these lines—affirming my spirituality and God’s continuing care—until I was able to feel real gratitude toward my employer, rather than resentment. (After all, the company was continuing to pay my tuition!)
Fairly quickly, I gained the conviction that I could focus on expressing “righteousness, faith, charity, peace,” in my own life, and let God take care of everything else.
I had an incredible year with my new project. It took me to Italy for several months and led me in a more satisfying career direction. And while I wasn’t able to use the new project in my thesis, I did expand on the original project in my spare time. I was able to submit a complete thesis and get my degree.
By looking inward and expressing the goodness, charity, even humility that God asks of us, I set priorities that got me through the experience in a good way, even though there were lots of twists and turns.
Science and Health explains, “When we wait patiently on God and seek Truth righteously, He directs our path.” It takes discipline to stick with spiritual priorities, but it’s a quality I’m convinced is well worth developing.
Science and Health
254:10-12
King James Bible
II Tim 2:22