What's Important (Friday Devotional)

*Note*: The rest of my month will be consumed by an international vacation and an impending move, so this will be the only devotional this month. I will resume sending these out every Friday starting June 7.

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”

- Mark 8:34-36

When you think about Margaret Wise Brown, you probably think first of Goodnight Moon, the bedtime classic written by Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd. Next to mind is probably The Runaway Bunny, authored by the same team of writer and artist. If your knowledge of Brown’s bibliography goes deeper, then you may also be familiar with award winners like The Little Island, My World, and The Golden Egg Book.

But perhaps my favorite Margaret Wise Brown book is 1949’s The Important Book. In this short picture book, Brown poetically describes everyday things, singling out at the beginning and end of each passage what she believes matters most about those things. For example, she says:

“The important thing about rain is that it is wet.

It falls out of the sky,

And it sounds like rain,

And makes things shiny,

And it does not taste like anything,

And is the color of air.

But the important thing about rain is that it is wet.”

Brown’s passages about the rain, the sky, grass, and apples got me wondering, what would my page say if I was in The Important Book—what is most important about me? All of us are different, which means all our pages would sound different. For some, the descriptions would have a lot to say about your work. For others, your family life would take center stage. For still others, everything from your dreams to your hobbies to your politics might make the descriptive cut.

But for disciples of Jesus Christ, the first and last sentence of your Important Book page ought to be the same as any other Christian’s: “the important thing about me is that I believe Jesus is Lord.” Whatever else falls on your page, Jesus must be what starts and finishes it, because the gospel is not something you can compartmentalize as just one part of your identity. Rather, the gospel is something that changes you from the inside out, something that utterly transforms you.

Whatever else you have, whatever else you achieve, nothing is more valuable than knowing, trusting, ad following Jesus. Whatever else makes up your identity, may you always know what—and who—is most important.