Opine for the day...

A Catholic friend of mine recounted to me how he has been more focussed on his business of late after letting it slide over the last 5 years as he pursued a pipe dream. He's a husband and father... and a good guy. He was telling me how he has so much happening work-wise, making money to pull himself out of debt, thus better providing for himself and his family. He asked, rather rhetorically, "does that make me a better person?"

My reply to him:
Your reorientated priorities do not make you a better person per se, as relates to righteousness before God (of course you already knew that ;-). But you are a better person as relates to bringing home the bacon... providing... and I imagine it is more satisfying and esteem building. God made man to have dominion over the earth. To rule it wisely. Our little piece of the earth is made up of our families, our jobs, our relationships, our time, etc. It seems the non-glamorous stuff of life is what constitutes our path of growth and glory, depending on how we handle it. That's not to say it's the path to salvation from sin and death. That alone is the free gift of our God, by grace through faith in Christ. But this stuff of life is the path God has given for our sanctification and entering into practical godliness. And it is the struggle of life. Our short-sighted desires pull us away from this high calling that is soooo mundane and full of everyday drab, disappointments, and challenges (thorns and thistles from the curse in Gen. 3). But as our Lord taught, "He who saves (keeps) his life shall lose it, but he who loses his life for My sake shall find it." The right path often doesn't feel good at the moment, but as we continue to walk it we find a growing deposit in us that is His work. And as we often fail, we take refuge in the knowledge of God's full acceptance of us in His Son our Saviour who lived the perfect life that we can't and has credited it to our account... and then we enter the battle once again.

He wrote back, "Amen friend."