"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
(Genesis 1:1)

        Avoid them like the plague.   No, not priorities, things which have even the remotest possibility to cause harm.   That should be priority number one.   Plain and simple.

Putting it another way, the time known as 'never' is the instant of creation.   Remember "There came to be evening and morning..." and now tell me the word 'evening' does not resemble the word 'never'.   "Better is vexation than laughter", says the writer of Ecclesiastes.   Why?   A success counselor put it this way: "Until you're dissatisfied, you won't do anything to change it [for the better]".   We've all heard the saying: "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".   But there is more to what we call 'priorities'.   How about 'the order in which we choose to deal with our lives'.   We need to be careful because sometimes less important things aren't really less important; the Bible's counsel "the [things] which we think less honourable, these we surround with more abundant honour" is well taken.   Surely children fit into this category, which is why they should be honoured without merit.   Must we earn respect?   Where are your priorities, man!

About the statement 'God only knows': it has bearing on the prior fact of the creation of the universe, which God also did.   Why is the order of things so important?   Well if you've ever tried to think of something to say after starting a sentence you understand this.   'You've got to learn to walk before you can run', or so goes the saying.   "Make sure of the more important things", writes Paul to the Philippians (Phil 1:10).   And why?   That you may be flawless and not be stumbling others.   Of course.   First things first.

What about having a good time?   How does that fit in with priorities?   "All that your hand finds to do", says the king, "do with your very power, for there is no knowledge or wisdom in [the grave]" (Eccl. 9:10).   But "everything is vanity" is the theme of this book.   "No temptation has taken you except what is common to men" is what 1Corinthians 10:13 has to say about this.   In other words, it's all been done before.   "Nothing new under the sun" would be another way of putting it (Eccl. 1:9).   Also, "that which is made crooked cannot be made straight" (Eccl. 1:15), all the more reason to get it right the first time.

But do priorities have to do with secular matters only?   No, because matters of the spirit come first.   Force equals mass times acceleration is known as Newton's second law.   His first law is that velocity does not change without a force of some kind.   His third law is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.   The second law of thermodynamics states that matter always tends towards greater disorder.   Life is the greatest violation of the second law of thermodynamics.   Order which is self-sustaining, which gives birth {birth spoken loudly}.   But what always comes first?   A force.   No, nothing ever happened without a force.   So, of all priorities, this is the first one.

By the way, was there time before the universe began?   How do we measure time? Is it not by movements of stars and planets?   This is somewhat abstract to say the least.   If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears, did it make a sound?   How do you know it fell?   There is other evidence, probably.   Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says you can't know both the position and momentum of a particle simultaneously, or the energy and time of creation simultaneously. Interesting.   So time began with the big bang.   "Don't look back", Lot's wife was warned.