One Thing

A few years back, I rented the video City Slickers. If you recall, the movie is about an eastern business executive who is tired. He is tired of his family. He is tired of his job. He is tired of the rat race. He is just plain tired of his life.

This man, played by Billy Crystal, is influenced by some friends to go to the western United States with them to a “dude ranch,” where they would just get away from it all for a few months by participating in a cattle drive. I know this sounds ridiculous but, the idea was that you need a break, and this is a great way to get just that. Leave it to Hollywood. His ideas included change of a more drastic nature, but after some prodding from his wife, he acquiesces and goes with his friends. This is where the plot of the movie begins to take off.

The primary conflict in the play is between the main character and the only REAL cowboy on the drive. This cowboy, played by Jack Palance, was a mountain of a man, with enough physical strength to keep these city boys shaking in their boots. Everything he does is taken to mean he has either killed or mangled someone.

As the movie progresses this cowboy and the business executive, develop a strange kind of love/hate friendship. The “city slicker,” begins to probe into the inner reaches of the cowboy and Palance tells of the one love of his life that he lost. Crystal eventually gets this cowboy to share his “secret of life and happiness.”

That secret: “Just one thing.”

I know . . . it confused Crystal's character for a while as well. But it finally came to mean: Find the one thing that is important to you and cling to it, cherish it, care for it and love it with all of your being.

In typical screenplay fashion, the cowboy dies and Crystal is left to figure out the above fact. After a brush with death, the city slicker discovers that when he was about to die, the important thing to him was his wife and children. That's not bad for the movie industry.

I have often asked myself, “Why do we not realize what we really care about until we are removed from it?” As I sat 500 miles from my family, a few years back, a few incidents took place that reminded me how precious they were to me. Everyone around me noticed it. But should they be my “one thing?”

I love my ministry. But should it be my “one thing?”

There are people I truly love and care for. We all have folks we love and care for. But should they be our “one thing?”

Scripture says something similar to the fictional cowboy's lines only there is a slight change. In Matthew 22:37-38 we read “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and all of your soul, and all of your mind.” Jesus couples that with loving your neighbor as yourself. Loving God should be our “one thing.” It then affects all the other “things” and people in our life.

You may already get my point . . . but if not here it is: If the Lord is your ONE THING, all of the other “things” do not have any trouble with their place. The reason is simple. If the Lord is given first place, He will never have you do anything to harm the other “places.”