For those of us who grew up attending Sunday School, the phrase "God first, others second, me last" is as familiar as "Hail Mary, full of Grace," "Do unto others as you would have done unto you," "I before e except after c" etc. We base this largely on the part of the New Testament where Jesus told us that all the law and the prophets hung on these two commandments, "To love God and to love your neighbor as yourself."
One could even argue that in this very statement, Jesus established the order...God, neighbor, self. However, a closer look at the grammatical construction reveals something different. In order to love your neighbor "as" yourself it would logically follow that you must love yourself first...as the model for how to love others.
When the Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come, He answered by telling them it was within them, basically informing them that if they were looking for it anywhere other than inside themselves they were looking in the wrong place. It is the religious mind that always wants to know the literal...where, when, how. It is religion that teaches you to blame your problems on some force outside yourself, namely the "devil." And it is also religion that teaches you to look for solutions to those problems in something outside yourself...when the whole time, Jesus is telling you the answer - the Kingdom of God - is within you.
He has been trying to tell us all along that it is Christ WITHIN us that is the hope of glory. I challenge you this year to take inventory of yourself and let Spirit carry you to you. I can guarantee you that there you will find the source of all your perceived "problems" - however, it is also there that you will find the solutions to those problems. When we find the Kingdom of God within ourselves, we can then look in the mirror and "behold the glory of God" in our own face.
|