What is at the center of our life? For many, as I suggest in 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed, it is work. Abe Lincoln said this: “My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don’t deny it. I’d rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh — anything but work.”
But isn’t work the center of so many of our lives? What did Jesus think was the center of life?
Matt 6:33 reveals an answer: “at the center of a centered life is God and God’s way.”
Things are not at the center.
The kingdom is at the center: the kingdom is the society in which God’s will is done.
Righteousness — or God’s will and our conformity to it — is at the center.
Pentecost, toward which we are looking, empowers us to put God and God’s way at the center of life.
More importantly, perhaps, Pentecost empowers us but also enables us to be content with God and God’s way as the center of life.