The next-thing can keep me very busy.

The next-thing doesn’t matter any more when a new next thing shows up.

When there are no more next-things, a person can feel very lost and very lonely

We make next-things out of so many different parts of our lives; relationships, jobs, sports, houses, cars or even education. Young people wait for the next boyfriend or girlfriend. Parents live vicariously though their children and don’t know what to do when they move out of the house. People can’t wait for their new flat screen TV’s and then can’t wait for the new season of whatever show they are watching. (I think the attendance of my church went up during the writers’ strike.)

The point here isn’t to make people feel guilty. The point is to highlight a particular human tendency. These activities and things in themselves aren’t usually the problem, although they can be. The blame, most of the time, should be put in the wrong way we view life.

Instead of viewing life as a series of next-things, positioned one right after another to create significance, we must begin to search for the one thing. “That sounds great,” you might think, “but what is the one thing?” I’m glad you asked. As George MacDonald put it, it is God. The psalmist agrees when he pours out his heart to us and says, “One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and seek him in his temple.”

Some of you who are like me might be thinking, “I don’t know about all this ‘gazing upon beauty’ and ‘dwell in the house’ or ‘seek him in his temple’ stuff.” But let me break it down for you to where you and I can understand it. The writer is saying, “Instead of a bunch of next-things, I want one-thing. And that is going to be the only thing I search for: I want to be where God is, I want to see him face to face, and I’ll search for him where I know he can be found.” When we shift our focus from a series of next-things to one-thing, we begin to have significance.

What can you do to focus on the one-thing?