Life Focus? HUH?

I know that for me in the early days of being a single mom, my life focus was to get up and put my body in clothes, my feet in shoes, and my hands to work at whatever had to be worked that particular day.
Make sure the bills are paid.
Make sure the kids are bathed.
Make sure the doors are locked!

Life Focus?

SERIOUSLY?
Life was a never ending quest of 'NEED to DO-s'.

And then a question was asked:

Imagine you are standing before the Great God of the Universe, the wonderful God who IS and life is over. What do you want to be able to say you lived your life for?

This questioned changed my life. I searched my heart for a few weeks before I came up with my Life Focus. I call it my plumb line. (Forgive me, my dad was an engineer - a plumb line keps life, buildings, and anything else that needs to be straight and aligned, straight and aligned!)

Now, I had heard the wonderful analogy of filling a jar with marble and sand. You might not have heard of this. If you have please bear with me.

Take a large jar, a large amount of marbles and a bag of sand.

Fill the jar with sand and then put in the marbles... can you get any in?

Now fill the jar with marbles and pour in the sand. Can the sand fill up the empty spots?

Imagine that the sand is life's urgency and the marbles are life's valued desires

If we don't put our most valued desires into our day plan first, our day will be filled up with only life's urgency!

But if we put our most valued desires into our day plan first, our urgent issues will still get taken care of and our days will be more profitable all around.

And that sounded really good and it sounded like days would end better if I did this, but it was simply to small. It was about JOBS and TO DOs. I never made the jump to life until I was asked the above question.

But this isn't simply our days, it is our lives as well.
We find our focus, our plumb line. We straighten out when we imagine the end.

What would you say is the one thing that you would like to be able to say to God when you have no more life to live?

I asked myself this question and spent several weeks thinking about it. When I figured the answer to this question, life took on a different shape. I asked myself more and more often: does this align with my plumb line, my life focus?

Once I figured out my One THING, every thing I did in life was checked by this one Focal Point, this Plumb Line. Does this (whatever it is that I was doing) lead me closer to or further away from my focal point, my plumb line?

Does my day align with my one end desire? What do I want to be able to say I tried to do for God? for this world? for my children? for myself? The one most important thing. Am I doing it?

Granted, I know this is hard.

I know because I have had the house, the bills, the craziness, the dark gloom, the moments of hysteria! I have had them all. But, when I figured this one thing out, life got better and better.

It wasn't over night. However, I put the One THING on a BIG piece of paper and taped it to my bathroom mirror. I read it every day as I was preparing for work. I read it at night when I was overwhelmed by the day and wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere. I read it and read it and read it.

The longer I read it, the more I realized it on a daily basis. My thoughts began to change and I chose different things. I Lived More Purposefully.

Today isn't the beginning of the New Year. It isn't even the beginning of a new month. But it is the beginning of this moment, which will lead to the next moment and the next and the next.

And when all those moments are gathered together and form a day, you have two day end results. A day filled with urgent or a day filled with purpose.

And as we know, moments lead to days, lead to months, lead to years and these complete a life.

So my encouragement for you today:

Search your heart. What do you want to be able to give God when you see Him?

Yes, imagine standing before the Great God of the Universe, the wonderful God who IS. Life is over. What is the one thing that is most important?

The answer to this question can be your plumb line. The answer to this question can help you decide what to do, try, work on next. Does this act move me closer to my plumb line?

I hope this word of encouragement helps you wherever you are in life. May we live it to the fullest.

RoRoEbenezer
&HoneyB