As a rookie Christian and newly credentialed worker in Christ’s Service, I was sitting in a meeting being mentored by my current pastor, when I heard him say, “You’ve got to major in majors and minor in minors.” What he was saying basically was that a pastor needed to do the important things first and the less important things later. I don’t even remember what the context of the conversation was. All I knew was that in that instant, the man had just lost all my respect. As far as I was concerned, when it came to interactions between God and man, everything was major, there were no minors, and anyone who didn’t know that, well they just didn’t understand the heart of God and didn’t deserve to be a pastor!
Ah youth! To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, “It’s a shame youth is wasted on the young!” So much energy coupled with so little wisdom. Life pretty much solves that problem, although by the time it does, we are closer to eighty than to eighteen. As for me, a few years as a pastor brought me to a different perspective and understanding of what that gentleman was really trying to convey, which was simply that while God in His omnipotence is able to treat all things as equally important and give equal attention and consideration to all things, we as simple humans are not. As we cannot be all things to all people all the time, we have to prioritize, or one might say we have to “major in majors and minor in minors.”
Yes, even God majors in majors and minors in minors. We are told in Ecclesiastes 3:1
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven”
God didn’t do everything all at once. He took six days to create and decorate the world and on the seventh day, not the first or third day mind you, He rested. And he did things in order of priority: the land before the plants, the water before the fish, the man before the woman (no, wait). As you look you will see that God filled the earth with things as they related to one another and fit together (which, now that I look at it critically, answers that age old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg? Correct, it was the chicken)
God has seen fit to give us a twenty-four hour day. Twenty-four hours to get done what needs to be done for that day, knowing that there is a time for everything, and if it’s not today, it might just be tomorrow, or the day after that, or next week.
So how does one live a balanced life? How does one live a life majoring in majors and minoring in the minors?
I think a well lived life breaks down into three basic building blocks. For a good sermon outline, we could call them “occupation, recreation, and associations”, but in plain English we will just call them “work, rest, and relationships”.
We may not like it, but the fact is that work makes up a large part of our identity and is responsible for the satisfaction we get out of life. The right job can be a life long love affair. The wrong one can be a living hell. We need to choose what we will do wisely, because we will be spending roughly a third of our lives doing it.
Second is rest. Most people take better care of their phones than they do of their bodies. Rest gives our bodies time to recharge and our minds time to download and process the day’s input. If you don’t plug your phone into the charger, your phone will eventually shut down. The same goes for your body. If you don’t plug into your bed and actually recharge, you will eventually run down and possibly shut down. You will most certainly experience performance glitches (think falling asleep at the wheel) and data drops (confusing times and dates, forgetting things) and general loss of efficiency. The body needs rest!
Lastly, relationships. We are made by a Triune God. The very Godhead speaks of community and we are made in His/Their image. Our relationship with God is paramount and requires attention, care and maintenance. Our relationships with others are nearly as important and perhaps even more demanding because people require a lot more maintenance than God does.
It’s intimidating. Are we really up to managing these three “majors”? I believe we are. We just need to go back to that twenty-four hour day. Twenty-four hours to manage three majors and whatever minors come along.
Let’s say we give eight hours to each major each day. Eight times three is twenty-four. Hmmm. I see a certain symmetry to this. Eight hours to given to work. Eight hours to rest. Eight hours to spend on relationships. If you take care of these majors in the eight hours each that we’ve been given, I think you will see the minors will be taken care of also.
"Most people fail in life because they major in minor things."
Tony Robbins
I remember a gift someone gave my wife. It was a quart canning jar, and in it were twelve walnuts and two cups of rice. There was a note on the jar that said if you take the rice and put it in the jar first, you will never be able to get the walnuts into the jar. If, however, you put the walnuts in first, and then pour the rice in over them, the rice will fill in all the empty spaces and will all fit neatly in the jar. The note went on to say that life is a lot like that. It’s made up of a whole bunch of little things, and a few very big things. If we spend all our time on the little things, the big things will never get done, but if we will do the big things first, all the little things will fall into place around them and you will find as you look back that your life has been well lived.
I guess when all is said and done, it is about majoring in majors and minoring in minors.
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