As I’m sitting here thinking about writing this article, my mind starts to focus on everything else but this article – What I have to do tonight.  What I have to do tomorrow and everything in between. I can’t help but wonder what would happen if my mind just didn’t focus on getting this article written? What would happen if I got preoccupied with something/everything else – not that that EVER happens. What if the only involvement I had with this article was a blank page?

Then God brought to mind a story I heard a few years ago about a kamikaze pilot interviewed after his fiftieth mission.  Yup, you read that correctly, his fiftieth mission.  The reporter asked the kamikaze pilot if he was a contradiction in terms.  After all, a kamikaze’s mission is to fly into military bases and give up his life for the mission.  The reporter then asked him how he could still be alive after fifty missions. His response was a response that a lot of us today could use; he said “I was very involved. Not very committed, but very involved.”

There is a big difference between “being involved” in something and “being committed” to something. In today’s culture we are very involved. We’re involved in sports, work, education, family, church, exercise, politics, meetings, facebook, etc. Most things are done out of genuine concern for our kids and others and some are for our own pleasures, but you name it and we’re involved in it. With us being so involved in so many activities and interests, how can we be committed to any?  Being committed to something means giving it your all and it’s hard to give your all when your all is spread out between so many other things.

In Matthew 6:24 Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters.  For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other.” In this passage Jesus was referencing our priority between God and money, but I think He could also be saying to us today; how can you commit yourself to God if you’re so involved with everything else? Like the kamikaze pilot shows us, when we are just involved we don’t become who we say we are, I ask us all (myself included) are we committed to God or just very involved?

Nate Eckert is the Youth Pastor at Flora UMC.