Sorting out your Priorities

Readings: Haggai 1:9,12

As law students there are constant demands on our time. First, there is the reading and preparing for classes, which can amount to more than 100 pages a week. Then there is the actual class time itself, followed by the time spent outlining, reviewing, and working on practice problems. Not to mention the clubs, church, family, work, and social activities which consume every other spare minute of our days. After all of the activities is it any wonder that in our busy lives our priorities may become a little confused over our time in law school? We are working and working hard but are we working for what really matters?

In the Old Testament, as Joshua and the people were rebuilding the city of Jerusalem they developed a work ethic that would challenge even the strongest "Protestant work ethic" today. They were rebuilding their homes, businesses, well, and everything else in the city. However, they were not pleasing God in their efforts, they were not working on his first priority. God wanted his people working on his house before they worked on their own homes. But how does this apply to us today? It is not as if there is an actual temple that God wants rebuilt is there?

The answer to that is no. Of course, there is no actual temple that God wants us to physically rebuild. However, God still wants us to be building his temple, in the bodies and lives of Christians. In order to build God's temple and do his will we must first have a personal relationship with him. If we ever hope to build God's temple we have to do more then simply go to church on Sunday, give offerings, or be baptized. We have to have a personal, heartfelt relationship with God.

As law students we are often more consumed with law school and all the demands on our time from every location to stop and consider our relationship with God. He is our focus for a couple hours on Sunday morning, if that, and than He is placed on the back burner for the rest of the week. In doing so we, like the people in the Old Testament, are building our own houses before we build God's. However, the time has come for us to stop and think; which house is going to last for eternity?

Additional Readings: Matthew 6, 1 Corinthians 3

Source: Buzzard, Lynn, ed. What does the Lord require of you? Devotional readings for lawyers. Advocates Int'l 1999.