Better and More

“There doesn’t have to be choice!” Jim Craig says to Jessica Harrison in “Return to Snowy River.” One of my all-time favorite movies. Let me describe the scene. Jessica loves Jim and wants to marry him, but her father, a very strong-willed, self-made man, thinks that Jim is not worthy of his daughter. Mr. Harrison tells Jessica, “it’s me or him Jess” (or something like that) but Jim pleads that it doesn’t have to be that way. I don’t want to spoil the outcome if you’d like to watch it, but just so you’ll know for this illustration, Jim is right.

There will always be the debate over whether quality or quantity is the better when it comes to time and the heart, but I believe they are pretty much at a dead heat. Time is important because we have to live and work in this restraint, so quality has to be right there with it because this keeps the quantity worth it. It redeems the quantity of what is spent on anything or anyone. Time is like a currency that we all have a pre-determined by God amount of. So whatever uses our time, must in a sense be worthy of it. No one’s time should be more important than the others. We all need to make our time matter because it most certainly does. Don’t “kill” time. “Live” time.

Shouldn’t anything we do that is worthwhile be done better and more? Don’t you want more time to do the things that feed your soul and bless others? Is there a way to make all that your life entails holy and good?

These are my new goals. I want to love God and others better and more. I want to trust God better and more.  I want to follow Jesus better and more and this requires quality and quantity. My best and my most.

Oswald Chambers’ devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, comes to mind. I have been through this devotional several times and that statement, which is the title, should be mine. Every, single day. This man, passing to glory at the age of 43 said this:

“Shut out every other consideration and keep yourself before God for this one thing only – My Utmost for His Highest. I am determined to be absolutely and entirely for Him and for Him alone.” (Oswald Chambers, 1874-1917)

This man didn’t sequester himself in a monastery so that “normal” life would not distract him from this purpose. He was married, became a father and served as a chaplain in the military in Egypt. That is about as much of the “real world” as you can live in. He followed Jesus example of going to the public with who He was and is and will forever be.

No matter what is going on around us, our relationship with God is the most important. It is what we should give quality and quantity to, be better and more for. There doesn’t have to be a choice it is a command for our good and His glory. The only choice we need to make is to run our own race. The race He has created us for. And run it with the most honest effort we can muster.

Hebrews 12:1-2, “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (NKJV)