The Three Most Important Things in Life

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I’m going to share what I have found to be the three most important things in life. It may be different for you, but this is my experience. What you won’t find on the list is work. Stephen Covey famously said that nobody, at the end of their life, wishes they spent more time at the office.

It’s not that work is unimportant. The ministry I serve is important to me. When I do focus on the most important things, it has a positive impact on my work.

The most important thing in my life is my relationships.

As a Jesus follower, that starts with God. The deeper my relationship with God the more I want to give myself to others to make their lives better. This includes family, friends, my church community, the people I work with and people in the community, including the least among us.

The more I seek to make the lives of others better, the more meaning and joy I have in my life. I think this is how we are created. And, as Jesus says in Matthew 25, when we do this for the least among us, we meet him face-to-face

Next, there is my health-spiritual, emotional, physical.

The first two are directly connected to my relationships. Making my relationships the top priority greatly improves my spiritual and emotional well-being.

My physical health is something I took for granted for most of my life. When I turned 37, my brother, who is 11 years older, said age 37 was his physical peak. After that, things didn’t heal as quickly and aches and pains started showing up without provocation. He was right.

There are many things we can do to keep healthy. Good nutrition, exercise and sufficient sleep are essential.  Even so, illness or injury can impact our lives. Regardless, the rest of life is much more difficult if you don’t have your health.

Finally, there is time.

Everybody gets the same amount of time each day. The use of time is integral to relationships and health. How we use it has the biggest impact on our quality of life.

In his book First Things First, Stephen Covey writes about the law of the farm. He uses the experience of a farmer as a metaphor for quality of life. The farmer tills, sows, waters and waits. There are factors beyond his control that will affect the quality of the harvest. But one thing is certain, if the farmer doesn’t invest his time, he won’t have a harvest. And the farmer can’t cram all of these activities into a single week, like a student studying for finals, and expect to have a harvest. He has to invest the time and do so over the course of time.

If you don’t invest time in your relationships on an ongoing basis, you won’t have any to speak of. Even worse, you’ll have a crisis or conflict that can drag you down.

If you don’t invest time in your health on an ongoing basis, your body will drag you down and you won’t be able to accomplish the things God has in store for you.

So what can you do to re-order your life to focus on deeper more meaningful relationships and better health?

How can you be more intentional about the use of your time so you can invest in these things?

And what can you do so that God can make you all that you were created to be?

Go with God. And be with God.

The Rev. Jack Shitama serves as executive director of Pecometh Camp & Retreat Ministries in Maryland. This post is republished with the author's permission from his Christian Leaders' Blog.