Putting First Things First

When I find something that I super like, I just keep doing it over and over. If it's listening to Paul Baloche's "What Can I Say?" or Chris Tomlin's whole album See The Morning, I'll listen over and over and over. I found a new thing this weekend that I probably did more than 25 times...even closer to 50 times. I ran through a seven foot tall tunnel. It was a quite quiet old galvanized steel foot tunnel that brought you under a well traveled road.
I kept running through this dimly lit tunnel over and over and over again. I'd run through and ask my God to meet me and He would.
I'd run through and pray for my friends like you. I'd run through and listen to my God. Sssshhh. I'd run through and tell Him how marvelous He is. I'd run through and pray for whomever He laid on my heart. I'd run through and listen back. I'd run through and get real quiet in my heart. I'd run through and pray out loud with a reverberating voice. I'd run through and listen to His Word. I'd run through and listen to "You Dance Over Me" over and over. I'd run through and stand still. And I came back the next day and did it all over again. I found my tiny tunnel stretching over twenty yards or so while Britt and I were at a USA swim meet this weekend in an unfamiliar place to me. These swim meets last the whole day to swim 3 events that last only a couple of minutes or sometimes sixty seconds so spectators have a lot of free time. Tunnel time.

The tunnel was a pipe of steel material arranged in uniformed ridges and each ripple was bolted down twelve times. Arranged perfectly to accommodate serious runners and not-so-serious joggers. There was that word popping up again---arranged---I have been thinking about that word for two weeks after a conversation with a friend who told me that my God will give me new friends, new travelers of the heart, but it won't be as arrangeable as it has been in the past which wasn't really arrangeable anyway. What kept coming to my mind is this...sometimes, even unaware, I am trying to arrange my friendships, arrange better circumstances, arrange my day to get better results, arrange my life to make it better, arrange ministry success...all the while my God is saying "Seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well." Matthew 6:33 I wonder if that verse is what inspired C.S. Lewis to write: "You can't get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first."

I don't want to live in control of my family, my friends, my ministry, my money, even my Maker. As if I really think that I am in control of my life. I long to get in on what my beautiful God is arranging in my life. I long to live my life under the control of the One who is arranging all things for His Glory.