Don’t Shoot Yourself Down

And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.—Luke 10:41-42   It really happened. A Navy jet fighter plane shot itself down! While testing a new cannon mounted on its wing, the plane ran into a shell it had fired a few seconds earlier. The problem was that the plane was flying at supersonic speed while the shell was subsonic. The result was that the plane destroyed itself in a collision with what it had launched.   Back in the Ozarks folks often say, “I’m so busy I meet myself coming and going.” The fact is, sometimes our pace of life is too fast for our own good. If we aren’t careful we can be destroyed by the very things we’re trying to do.Some way we’ve got it in our head that more is always better. We try to cram as much as possible into every day. We tend to feel we have failed unless we complete everything on uur check list. We get frustrated when we don’t accomplish all that we planned to do. That can lead to a lot of problems, including broken health. Maybe we need to keep a shorter list. Sometimes it might be best to throw the list away!   We often accomplish more by doing less. Our spiritual growth is often stunted by getting caught up in a whirlwind of activities. Our fast-paced lifestyle makes us “a jack of all trades and a master of none.” We go so fast that the very project we launch destroys us. That’s not smart! Don’t shoot yourself down by trying to do so much that you fail to accomplish God’s mission for your life. The price is too high! (H.D.S.)