Getting a Right Start

One of the daily creeds which I live by is a simple one and it is this: Do a thing right the first time and you won't have to do it again. Believe it or not, it works every time. There is another simple, daily creed which I choose to live by and it goes like this: Keep your relationships right and you'll be right. Not very profound, I know, but it works every time.

That's why it is important to get started right in anything you do and then stay right. Life for every person has three primary relationships - to God, to people and to things. If our relationship to each of these is good, then life is good. If they are bad, life is bad.

Think a minute about your relationship to God. When you think of God, are you afraid of unforgiven sins? Do you know him personally and joyfully as the God who has created you, redeemed you and reconciled you? Are you a friend of God's, by His grace, and servant to the Master, Jesus Christ? This is the right place to begin. Unless the relationship to God is right, all others will just turn out not quite so right. This is life's highest relationship.

Then take some time to think about your relationship to people. It is impossible to be right with God and wrong with people. How's the forgiving spirit? How's the selflessness - in order to help others? If you have resentment or envy where someone else is concerned, your relationship to people needs an adjustment.

And then there's relationship to things. You need to own things - not the other way around - things owning you. Can you be happy and helpful with little as with much? It's hard to admit, but it is true that unless, like Job, you can suffer the loss of things and still be true to God, you are wrongly related to things.

The daily temptation is to allow our relationships to erode to something less than good. I know. It's happened to me at stops along my journey. Getting started is just one part of the whole picture. Keeping things going is not always so easy. It doesn't just happen. We have to work at these relationships.

Every day life's values must be affirmed and life's priorities must be established. Only then do we start the day right and find adequate provision of God's "poured out" grace in our lives to keep every relationship right.

After all, there's never anything with always being right.