When My Heart Is Fixed on Lesser Things

Devotional

Nothing in your life is trying to be an idol.

That's what makes this hard. It's almost never a bad thing. It's the promotion. The house. The kid's future. The number in the account that would finally let you stop checking. It's usually a good thing that quietly got promoted to load-bearing, and you didn't notice the day it happened.

Paul doesn't open Colossians 3 by scolding anybody about that. He opens with what already happened to you.

"If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above." That "if" isn't a maybe. It's Greek for "since this is true." You have been raised. Past tense. Done. So the seeking Paul's about to command isn't how you get a new identity. It's what a person does who already has one.

"Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth." And don't hear that as checking out. Paul is not telling you to stop caring about your job. He tells you exactly where "above" is: "where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God." That's not a mood. That's an address. There's a seated King. Seated, because the work is finished. Setting your mind above means letting that fact rearrange everything down here.

Then verse 3, and it's the whole hinge. "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."

Hidden. That's the word to sit on. Your real life, the actual one, isn't on display. It's not in your résumé or your reviews or what anyone said about you last week. It's stored somewhere else. The market can't reach it. The diagnosis can't touch it. The person who thinks the worst of you doesn't have access to it.

So why do lesser things still get their hooks in?

Because we forget. Not because we've rejected Christ. Almost nobody does that on a Tuesday. What we do is supplement him. We add. We keep Jesus and we also keep a backup source of security, just in case, and we don't call it that. And a heart with a backup plan is a divided heart.

Now watch what Paul's fix is. It isn't try harder. It's get dressed.

"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience." Read the order. Before he tells you to put on a single thing, he tells you who you already are. Chosen. Holy. Beloved. The doing comes out of the being, never the other way around. Kindness isn't a self-improvement plan. It's what somebody wears who's already been dressed by grace.

And the forgiveness he asks for has a measure attached. "As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive." So when you can't forgive somebody, the real question isn't whether they've earned it. It's whether you've lost track of what you were let off of.

"And above all these put on love, which binds everything together." Love isn't one more item on the list. It's the thread. Without it kindness turns into performance and patience turns into resentment with good manners.

Then: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." Not occasionally. Richly. And notice it isn't private. Teaching each other. Singing to each other. The heart fixed on things above is not a heart alone in a room. It needs people who'll remind it what's real when it forgets again, which it will.

And then Paul closes the loop on your whole ordinary week. "Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus." Whatever. The email. The dinner. The conversation you've been putting off since March. There's no square foot of your life where lesser things get to rule unchallenged.

Your heart is going to fix on something. That's not optional. You were built to be devoted; the only question is to what.

The lesser things will keep making promises. They just don't have what they're promising.

Set your mind up there. Not to earn the place.

It's already yours.