Musing – My priorities were wrong!

Hebraic Musing – My priorities were wrong!

During the first eighteen years of my married life I was determined that my priorities were family, profession and community in that order. However, I found myself devoting evenings to community government activities until 3AM all too often; being sleepy the next day while working in my profession and taking on a second job. Not much time left for family!

After making Yeshua the Lord of my life in 1977, He became my Lord, my first priority. Then family came next, and my profession and community fell into their rightful places. And there was no more contention between priorities.

This reminds me of the story of how mixed up our priorities can get:

A businessman on vacation meets a Mexican fisherman. The businessman notices several large yellowfin tuna in the fisherman’s boat. He compliments the fisherman on the quality of the fish and asks how long it took to catch them. “Only a little while,” explains the fisherman. “Well, what do you do with the rest of your day?” the businessman wanted to know. “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos.”

The businessman couldn’t resist giving advice: “Don’t you know that if you spent more time fishing, you could buy a bigger boat, and then with the bigger boat, you could catch more fish until you could buy even more boats? You could eventually catch so many fish that you could avoid the middleman and sell directly to distributors. You would get so large that you could move to New York City where you would run the whole enterprise and then sell your company stock to the public. You could make millions!”

The fisherman thought about this advice and asked, “How long will this take?” The man replied, “Fifteen to twenty years. Then you could retire in a small Mexican village where you could sleep late, fish a little, play with your children, take a siesta with your wife, and sip wine with your friends.”

The confused fisherman replied, “But I’m doing that now!”

Moses understood this danger of confused priorities when he encountered two tribes who wanted to take care of their cattle so they requested to stay on the East side of the Jordan. The Gadites and Ruebenites said "We would like to build pens here for our livestock and cities for our women and children.” Num.32:16.   But after consulting God, Moses finally gave permission by saying “Build cities for your women and children, and pens for your flocks,…” Num 32:24.   

Point to Ponder

Why did Moses reverse the order of pens and cities?

May the Lord bless you and keep you … close to your families

Yosef   a.k.a.  Joe Brusherd                                     July 9, 2013

Author of two books “Hebraic Insights” and  “Biblical Marriage”

And weekly e-mails “Hebraic Musings”  Yosef1@cox.net  or  www.InsightsByYosef.com

Note -- Inspired by Rabbi Eckstein – Holy Land Moments