Getting Off Center

My wife and I recently bought a house that needed a bit of work. We've been fixing it up ourselves, including tearing out and redoing the kitchen. We got a good bit of work done before actually moving in, but we still don't have a kitchen. Things connected with the house have started to feel a little all-consuming. Every moment of spare time gets devoted to it, and both of us are looking forward to the day when it is not so much the focus of our lives.

Most all of us have times in life when something so dominates our routines that other things get squeezed out. When a child is born, life sometimes get turned upside down. A new job can do the same. Depending on the circumstances, these instances of our lives being reordered can be rewarding or frustrating, perhaps both. At times, we may even question our sanity in ever ending up in such a place.

Yesterday in my sermon, I asked the question (as much to myself as to anyone), "What is the one thing at the center or your life?" It came from Jesus' comment to Martha, "There is need of only one thing." And I thought of that question again as I read today's gospel parable where some seed produces abundantly while other does not.

A house does not really deserve the sort of attention and devotion that ours has been receiving of late. But at least that is something that will end in time (I hope). Other things need to be at the center for life to be what it should be, but we humans are very good at putting the wrong things there. As today's parable suggests, even when we put the right things at the center, we are easily distracted by "the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things," and our centers get all askew.

Our current focus on the house (however necessary for the moment) has left me feeling askew, and it is starting to wear on me. But other things that get us off center are more subtle and seductive. They play into the fact that more often than not, I make myself the very center of things. Never mind Jesus' insistence that God needs to be in that spot, with neighbor sharing a place with me.

I suspect that much like the strain I have felt from being so focused on a move and renovation, a great deal of the anxiety in our society today arises from an off centered focus on self that won't allow for a truly good and just society. After all, Jesus comes proclaiming a kingdom, a new social order, and it is built on lives that push self off to the side - Jesus says his followers are to "deny themselves" -  and are recentered on love of God and neighbor.

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