“Who’s the f’n new guy?”
Ah, that would be me.
Do you remember Sesame Street? They had a feature on the show where they would show 3 items/objects. Two of the objects would be similar or related somehow and one of them would be totally out of place. For example: a bed, a chaise lounge and a carrot.
The song that went along with it was, “One of these things is not like the others. Two of these things are kinda the same. One of these things is not like the others. Now it’s time to play our game.”
Well at this particular moment I was definitely the one thing that was not like the others…
It was the summer of 1980 and I was working on a special student landscape crew for the North Vancouver School Board. We were all grade 12 students from schools in North Van. We were all kinda the same.
However, the regular school board crew, comprised of full time maintenance guys, needed some help on a big job at Argyle School. So, my boss sent me to work with “the adults”. Being a fairly sheltered upper middle class kid I had never really met these kind of guys before.
To put it kindly, they were “rough”. Their favourite word was “f’n” – in all its glory. Quite frankly, I had never really heard that word much before. In fact, it was never uttered in our home. What struck me though, was the ability of these guys to weave a tapestry of profanity on whatever subject they decided to expound upon.
The topics they most enjoyed yattering about were, of course, women and motorcycles. Again, I’d never really heard women talked about like that before. This was a vacabulational education I really did not want to receive. Sadly though, I was sentenced to work with these guys for a week. I would indeed receive a cross-cultural experience I had never imagined I ever would, nor one I desired.
My memory of the week was spent minding my own business working alongside this group of 3 biker buddies laying sod on a new soccer field. Pick up a roll of sod, lay it down, roll it out, and kick it into place, over and over and over again. I tried to be pleasant and engage with them as best I could, but I was pretty shell-shocked by the F Bombs they kept dropping – amongst many other unmentionables.
I’ll never forget one particular relational scenario described in great detail by one of the guys. He was talking about an argument he had with his “f’n old lady”. She wasn’t happy with some of his behaviour so he had to set her straight…
“So I says to her, ‘Hey, you f’n don’t get it – first comes my f’n friends, then comes my f’n bike, then comes f’n you. And if you f’n don’t like it you can f’n leave.’ So she f’n left.”
I almost burst out in guffaws of laughter. Valuing my life though, I did not. My respect for his “old lady” definitely went up that day.
He had a clear understanding of his priorities, but he did not have his priorities straight.
How about you, do you have your priorities straight?
Our priorities need to be the following:
Our first priority needs to be our relationship with God no matter what our station is in life. He’s the source of everything in our lives. He’s life. He’s our wellspring of living water.
If you’re married, the best gift you can give your wife is a great relationship with the Lord.
Our relationship with our wife needs to our second priority, right behind Jesus. The best gift we can give to our children is a good marriage – and that’s only possible when we’re making God #1.
What are you putting in front of your relationship with the Lord?
Anything we put in front of the Lord is idolatry, and that does not lead to life. What do you need to surrender to God?
Let’s get our priorities straight.
Exodus 20:3
“You shall have no other gods before me.”
Luke 14:26
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.
Luke 16:13
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
Jeremiah 2:13
“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”
Colossians 3:5
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.”