Philippians 3:10 “I want to know Christ.”
Sometimes Hollywood scripts are inspired. In City Slickers, Jack Palance plays a wily old cowboy and Billy Crystal is the younger businessman on a ranch holiday. They’re riding along on horseback and have a memorable and frank exchange which culminates with the following:
PALANCE: Yeah. You all come out here about the same age. Same problems. Spend fifty weeks a year getting knots in your rope then . . . then you think two weeks up here will untie them for you. None of you get it. (Long pause) Do you know what the secret of life is?
CRYSTAL: No, what?
PALANCE: This. (Holds up his index finger)
CRYSTAL: Your finger?
PALANCE: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean s——.
CRYSTAL: That’s great, but what’s the one thing?
PALANCE: That’s what you’ve got to figure out.
Have you figured it out yet?
What’s your life purpose? What really gets you excited? What do you want to give your life to? Obviously as a follower of Christ in its broadest sense we’d want to echo Paul’s ‘one thing’ in the verse above, but more specifically and individually, what is your ‘one thing’? We’re all created unique, with different gifts, passions and opportunities. As Søren Kierkegaard wrote:
“The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do . . . to find the idea for which I can live and die.”
To answer these crucial life-defining questions takes time and space. They can’t be solved in a three-minute hurried ‘quiet time’ inconveniently squeezed somewhere in the midst of a busy day. But one thing’s for sure: if we don’t make time to wrestle with them, we’ll simply continue to be ineffectual as we spin plates and crisis manage, victims of our own hectic decisions and bad choices.
Lord, I don’t want to live constantly spinning too many plates. Help me to discover what that ‘one thing’ is. Amen!
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