My wife has a problem. Patti has been a women’s health care nurse practitioner for forty years. That means she’s done over 100,000 exams. And that means she continually gets her left and right mixed up. Why? Because as she faces her patients and talks to them about their left side or their right side she has to reverse those positions in her mind. Their right is her left and their left is her right. Then she comes home, forgets that she’s not a work, and continues to reverse directions in her mind. “Turn left at Smith Ave,” Google Maps says, and she turns right. “Slight right in 1 mile,” and she goes slight left.
And that brings me to the subject of God. We all know that we are to seek God. But did you know that we are also to seek some things at his side? More specifically, we are to seek things at his right side.
But God’s right is our left. So as we imagine seeking the things at God’s right side, in our minds we have to look left. The Bible says that our entire lives should be focused, from our perspective, just to the left of God. It says we are to seek these things intently. We are to make them the central goal of our life. The Bible says these things are more real, more satisfying, and more lasting than anything we can get here on earth.
So here’s the question: What’s left of God?
Fortunately, the Bible gives us a pretty clear hint:
“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”(Colossians 3:1)
What’s left of God, this passage states, are “things” that are located where Jesus Christ is sitting, right beside God to his right. Are these physical things that Jesus is, say, holding in his lap? Is that what we’re supposed to seek? No. Not at all. Rather, they are “things” that God the Father and God the Son share together in their relationship: their love and fellowship with each other. Setting our hearts on “things above” means we seek to duplicate in our earthly relationships the kind of relationship the Father and Son have with each other. The Apostle Paul makes this clear later on in Colossians 3:
“Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.” (3:12, New Living Translation)
The “things above” that we are to set our hearts on are “tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.” In other words, we are to seek the things that make for healthy, loving relationships, the kind that the Father and Son have with each other. Jesus prays about this same idea of duplicating in our relationships his relationship with the father in his great high priestly prayer in John 17
“I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” (v. 26, italics mine)
So here’s what I like to do as I “seek the things above,” as I seek to duplicate God’s relationship with Jesus in my own relationships. I like to make a mental note of when I actually experience something that exists “left of God.”
As I gaze into my lovely wife’s eyes, for example, I think “This is left of God.”
When I pray with my team and our care receiver on her driveway after we’ve finished our service time, I think “This is left of God.”
When I sit around the table with my adult children and their loved ones at family gatherings laughing hilariously, I think “This is left of God.”
When I take my amazing pastor out to lunch, I think “This is left of God.”
When I mow my neighbor’s lawn, I think “This is left of God.”
These are the things I want more than anything else in life. They are priceless. Nothing is more satisfying, more fulfilling. Nothing brings more joy than the things that are “left of God.”
Discussion Questions
- Have you ever thought of seeking “the things above where Christ is” in this way before?
- Imagine the opposite of seeking “the things above where Christ is” as seeking “the things below where Satan is”. What types of things would these be?
- What experiences in your life have had the qualities of “the things above where Christ is”?
- What experiences in your life have had the qualities of “the things below where Satan is”?
- Which do you prefer?