You would think...but you would be wrong!

                You would think that as Christ transforms us our natural self with its’ desires of self-satisfaction, self-service and self-gratification would fade like a cowboy riding off into the sunset. You would think…but you would be wrong. You would think that an act of compassion towards another would overwhelm that natural inclination to think and talk about oneself. You would think…but you would be wrong. You would think that a selfless act would put us over the top in Kingdom righteousness and bury once and for all the selfishness that is within us. You would think…but you would be wrong.

                You would think that folks would forget themselves and focus on others in a time of grief or tragedy. You would think… (You know the rest). It is so easy to point the proverbial finger at others but consider your own actions and words of a conversation. You know the one where you went to console a friend following the death of a loved one, the loss of a job or some other traumatic event. What did you talk about? Did you allow them to talk more or be silent more or was the conversation slowly revolving around you and your situation or your experience? You would think the nature of our compassion would focus us on our friend/loved one. You would think…but you would be wrong.

                Focus on anything other than ourselves seems easy on the surface but it is so difficult. When taking students on a trip we used to play a game. Each person was given two clothes pins (do you remember what a clothes pin looks like?), the object of the game was to end with the most clothes pins attached to your clothes. The game was played by excluding the pronoun “I” from our speech. When you heard a player use the word “I” you could take their clothes pins from them, all of them. Several strategies emerged. One was to stop talking. Almost no one could do that over time as the other players would exploit that with simple questions. Another strategy was to substitute I with me or some other inappropriate pronoun. “Me needs to go to the bathroom.” “Me is hungry.” It makes you sound like a three year old learning to talk but it saves clothes pins. People would try to monitor their words but would always slip up. It seemed the most successful strategy was one of few very well-chosen words. You would think it would be easy…but it was hard.

                We are our favorite subject. Our emotions, our feelings, our dreams and desires us, us, us. When Jesus summed up the Ten Commandments into what we call the Great Commandment he did not include anything about loving ourselves. He said love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. You would think that would be easy…but you would be wrong. It is fundamental change. Not just on the surface but DNA change to consider God and others more than our selves. It requires a supernatural change of our thoughts, words and deeds. There is only one way to begin to deal with “I” and that is death. Dying to ourselves daily, repeatedly and purposely being made alive by Jesus. You would think we would know that by now…but you would be wrong. Sin is centered with “I.” Love has no such vowel. You would think…          

In HIS service and yours,                                          

BroG