the greatest commandment

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." Mark 12:30

I get a cold, uncomfortable, sinking sensation of inadequacy whenever my wandering mind comes across this verse. It'd be as though a God-sent angel swooped down from on high and splashed a bucket of ice water right onto my drowsy face.

Why? A patently obvious observation that strangely escapes me all the time suddenly confronts the ordinary day-to-day me (with all my pimples and idiosyncrasies) like a steam-snorting bull that's seen red.

Apart from the Lord Jesus, everything else -- which really includes everything else -- is secondary.

And then I slowly, painfully, come to grips with the undeniable truth that I've been doing it wrong all along. On the pedestal of my heart lay broken cisterns, self-made idols, instead of Him -- the God of my life.