Take Charge of Your Priorities

by Randy Hain | January 4, 2024 12:05 am

“I would like to share my top three priorities and how they keep me focused on living a Christ-centered life, filled with meaning.”


Living a Christ-Centered Life, Filled with Meaning

It took me almost forty years to make my way into the Catholic Church. I feel a burning desire to make up for lost time… and to make the most of the second chance I have received. To that end, over the next three weeks, I would like to share my top three priorities and how they keep me focused on living a Christ-centered life, filled with meaning.

We tend to make things more complicated than they really are.  When it comes to priorities, many of us have a check list of some kind that includes everything from going to the grocery store for milk to making sure our children get a great education.  We confuse mundane tasks with what is truly important in life.  If everything is important, then nothing is important.  

When it comes to living a fuller, richer life filled with meaning, what are your priorities?

Since my conversion into the Catholic Church, I have thought and prayed a great deal about what is truly important and what Christ wants me to do.  I tend to have a clear and unambiguous view of life and the more I try to discern the Lord’s plan, the more apparent it is becoming that I have just three simple priorities:

  1. I will serve Christ and love Him with all my heart.
  2. My family is my primary vocation.
  3. My workplace is also my ministry.

Seem like obvious choices?  Perhaps.  But in my professional life and through the ministries I am involved in, I meet hundreds of people every year who have no priority list. They often desperately want a list and don’t know where to start. Or perhaps they have the list I referred to earlier that only includes trips to the grocery store.  Over the next three weeks, we will unpack each of these priorities and examine some of the specific actions we can take to help these priorities become reality for each of us in our pursuit of meaningful lives.

Priority # 1 is God — “I will serve Christ and love Him with all my heart”

What does this mean?  How do we serve Christ?  If we love Him with all our heart, is there room for anything else?  These are questions which are probably running through your minds.  I would suggest to you that we serve and love Him by being humble, obedient, serving others, being good stewards and surrendering to His will.  Please consider these actions:

Next week, we will look at a second priority. What is my number one vocation?

Image credit: Photo by JOHN TOWNER[2] on Unsplash[3]

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Endnotes:
  1. CCC 2556: http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a0.htm#2556
  2. JOHN TOWNER: https://unsplash.com/@heytowner?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText
  3. Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/s/photos/hope?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText

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