Order of Operations

I was recently talking to one of my senior high students, and we got talking about prioritizing church. He mentioned that he wanted to go on the youth group trip happening soon here but also wanted to make his sports match. He then confessed that he had realized he wasn’t prioritizing church enough, and I told him I was happy that he was able to process all of that for himself and tell me about it. He then said something to the effect of: the order of operations goes church(Christ that is), family, school, sports. We talked through it some more and I told him the group would be glad to see him at the retreat.

What I realized while I was talking with him was that he had found a better “order of operations” it was memorable because its similar to the math techniques high schoolers are learning, It would obviously change if you’re not a student, and like theatre over sports or something, but the idea was simple, and thought provoking enough to stick with me.

What’s different about this is not only that you have to make Christ a part of everything in your life, you also have to make sure he is most important, and prioritized. What a gift for this high schooler to realize that!

That isn’t to say obligations, commitments, and the like aren’t important, its to say that you make decisions about those things based on the order of operations, if you can do all of that and have enough time for what comes first you will probably be fine.