The Only Thing That Matters

So, I was at Eikon (a special worship assembly at Faith Evangelical Free Church, all the Navs went to it this weekend instead of having NavNight), enjoying the worship songs and singing along, but I felt somewhat out of place.  My mind was elsewhere, for one, which was wrong.  I was distracted by recent happenings (silly ones, let me warn you).  I'd been playing an online strategy game called Astro Empires.  It's a persistent, real-time strategy game where you own a colony on a planet and build ships to go out and conquer the universe by building other ships, etc.  Well, anyway, in the game you can only see what's going on in your own region.  To see what the neighbors are up to, or even who the neighbors are, you have to build a ship and fly it over into their region.  The problem is, you can't see anything about the planets of those regions (excepting where they are) until you land your ship on them.  You cannot see, for instance, that the planet you've chosen to land your brand new scout ship on has a small battle fleet sitting on it--and they look like they want to eat your scout!  That's what happened to me, basically.  I was sending a scout (I was actually using a corvette, not a scout ship, per se--it's a little slower, but cheaper, better armed, and unlocked sooner in the game) to a neighboring region and when it landed on the planet, I found that a frigate with a full compliment of fighters was already there.  I panicked and quickly moved the corvette, lest it get eaten, and then took a quick look around the region before running away.  The quick look compounded the fright of coming out on top of a frigate when I saw that the player who dominated this region had a fleet he'd named "Colony Fleet."  I assumed this meant he had a fleet sitting around, with which he could colonize other worlds.  This boded ill for me, because I had my heart set on a rare and valuable little moon right next door to his region.  I couldn't yet claim it, because I hadn't unlocked my own colony ships, nor did I have the resources to build them.  But if he had a fleet of colony ships just sitting around and he spotted this moon, surely he would pounce on it and claim it long before I could get my colonization program off the ground!

Anyway, thus were the thoughts that distracted me, thoughts of my corvette's close call, and frantic plans to put together a colony ship ASAP so I could claim that precious moon.  Irrelevant thoughts, I know.  But God used them to make a relevant point.  From thinking about how precious that moon was and what I was willing to do to secure it, my mind went to thinking of what Jesus had been willing to do to secure me.  I chided myself for thinking of such foolish things as a game while I should be remembering what Christ had done for me.  "The only thing matters," I told myself, "is that Jesus loves you."  I then thought of all the things I should be doing, in light of that.  I should be concentrating on worship instead of on a game, of course.  I should be a more holy person.  I shouldn't allow myself to fall into habitual sins.  I thought of a whole laundry list of things I should do, but had failed to do--or just plain failed at.  I felt ashamed--a failure, a sinner, unworthy of the love I was shown.  But God reminded me of how He had forgiven all my sins, shames, failures, and unworthinesses--the whole list of things I've done wrong and failed to do right--, putting them away forever by the blood of His Son (Colossians 2:13-14).  The only thing that matters is that He loves me, and I love Him.  Oh for grace to love Him more!