Matthew 6:33
"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."
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I have lived long enough now to notice something about the word "first."
When we are young, "first" means the thing we put at the top of our list. We make the list ourselves. We rank our work, our family, our health, our faith, and we move the items around as the seasons change. Faith is on the list. Sometimes it sits near the top. Sometimes it slides further down when work is heavy or a child is sick.
That is how I understood this verse for most of my life. Put God first on the list.
Now I am older, and I see it differently.
Time has a way of sorting our priorities for us, whether we want it sorted or not. The work I thought was urgent at forty is not urgent now. The titles I chased are gone. The men I competed with have retired, or died, or become quiet old men like me. The list that I used to rank so carefully has been rearranged, item by item, by the years themselves.
What is left at the top is not what I chose. It is what remained.
This is the strange grace of getting older. The things that do not last fall away on their own. You do not have to push them off the list. They leave.
And what remains is closer to what the verse meant in the first place.
Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. Not as one item on a list of competing things. Not as the top priority among many. But as the ground beneath the list itself.
The kingdom is not a category. It is the country in which the rest of life happens.
When I was forty, I did not know this. I thought I was being faithful by keeping God near the top of a list I was managing. I would have told you I was seeking first the kingdom.
I was not. I was seeking my own work, and trying to make room for God inside it.
By the time you are seventy, you cannot do that anymore. The work has slowed. The room you used to manage has emptied. And in that emptier room, the verse becomes possible in a way it never was before.
You stop putting God first on the list. You start standing on Him as the ground.
"And all these things will be given to you as well."
I notice now that this second half of the verse, which used to feel like a promise about future provision, is more like a description of what has actually happened.
The things I needed were given. Not always when I asked. Not always in the form I expected. But given.
What I chased fell away. What I needed remained.
If you are reading this and you are still in the chasing years, I do not want to take that away from you. The chase is real and not all of it is wrong. But hear from someone who is further down the road: the list you are managing now will be rearranged by time, with or without your consent.
Seek first the kingdom now, while you can still choose. The years will sort the rest of it for you anyway.
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Prayer
Lord, You have been patient with me through all the years I thought I was putting You first when I was only making room for You.
Now, in the emptier room of these later years, teach me what it means to stand on You as the ground, not to rank You at the top of a list.
And for those who are still in the chasing years, give them the gift of seeing this earlier than I did.
Help me seek first Your kingdom today. The rest, You have already promised. Amen.
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Written by Dr. Jang in Jeju, Korea. Adapted into English by his son