A Basket of The Essential: Deny Yourself, Take Up Your Cross
The study of today’s scriptures drew me to this title: paying attention to the essential. To be honest, it didn’t sound like a difficult task at first, but on close examination, you kind of realize that every day we make some choices that do not fit in the category of the essential. Is that necessarily a bad thing? In our world maybe not, I may still live okay if I don’t focus on the essential, but Jesus explains to us that we cannot get to our destination if we don’t know where we are going/ the essential is needed. You may ask: What is this essential that is absolutely necessary in the Kingdom of God? Jesus points us to a category we call “profitable”. We all have this basket inside us and we put things in it, that we think are good/profitable to us. There is a huge gap however in God’s Kingdom, between choices with focus on divine things and those with focus on human things. They don’t mix. The essential has a formula that Jesus gave to his disciples and Paul repeated it on several