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FAMILY: Ordering Priorities
By Mark Hatfield
You husbands must love your wives … And now a word to you fathers. Don't make your children angry by the way you treat them.
EPHESIANS 5:25; 6:4
The home is the toughest environment of all for leaders. Why is it the ones we love most are the ones we are most impatient with? My wife has often said to me, "I wish you were as patient with your children as you are with your constituents." She's right. She reminds me that I'm accountable to God and to my family, and I'm grateful for that.
I think the greatest problem is our allocation of time, whether or not we let our professions exclude time with our families. If our lives are going to be given only to our professions, then better we had remained as Paul said, unencumbered by marriage and family. But if we do decide to marry and have a family, I am thoroughly convinced one has to set priorities as follows:
First, God. The Bible teaches us to love the Lord with all our strength, mind, and heart. Our second priority is our families because they are the gift of God to us; they are the joint effort of God's creating authority working through us. Our third priority is our professions, and if we put our jobs anyplace higher than third place, we have our priorities askew.
I've tried to communicate to my family that no matter how busy I am, I am always accessible to them. We need to communicate that verbally but also by our actions.
Reflection
What does my allocation of time say about my priorities?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, help me to take my family as seriously as you take the family of God.
"By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder—infinitely prouder—to be a father."
—Douglas MacArthur,
American five-star general, World War II
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Excerpted from Leadership Meditations: Reflections for Leaders in All Walks of Life, pages 61-64. Edited and selected by David Goetz. Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today International. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. For reprint information call 630-260-6200.
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