It's Not About Me: Truth Recycled

I know I keep writing about my capacity to forget, but I’ve been thinking about it again… I went down to Florida this week and had a great time enjoying family, sun, and a slow pace. It was beautiful, sunny weather there, but I packed all wrong. I couldn’t fathom wearing short sleeved shirts there while snow was looming here. Then as I was sitting on the warm beach watching the sun sparkle on the water (and sweating in my long sleeves) I was trying to remember the cold. I couldn’t. Made me think again about how much I forget—especially as seasons pass. Or how something I’ve known before can seem like a new lesson. Like forgetting how to drive in the snow, or how much a sunburn hurts, or that overeating on Thanksgiving makes me miserable, or that short haircuts don’t suit me, or that buying popcorn at the movies is not worth it. I forget and have to learn all over again. Like recycled Truth.

God is the Great Recycler. He will reprocess, redistribute, repackage, and rephrase Truth for us in so many ways until it finally connects. It seems that Truth pierces deeper and binds tighter each time it spirals and reruns. And then it suddenly makes sense and appears so obvious. And then I forget it again.

The one lesson I keep seeming to forget: “It’s not about me…” See, even when I forget all else, I still remember me. I’m a constant, so it’s easy to think it’s all for me and all about me. When I first started considering this phrase several years ago it was a mantra to slow down my selfishness. Then I read the book by Max Lucado, and it became a campaign to remember that God is the center. Since then, it has morphed and returned over and over again to permeate my thought processes and modes of existence in specific areas of life. God is showing me what it looks like when recycled and integrated into the way I think about things like…

Christmas
Church
Marriage & Family
Money & Work
Gospel & Salvation
Ministry

Writing helps me remember (or at least I can look back and read that I learned it before when I think I’m learning it for the first time), so I’m thinking of writing about some of the things God has been teaching me in these areas—how they’re not about me or for me. I need this Truth to be recycled in me. I wish writing about it sealed it and finished the work, but maybe it will at least pierce a new layer and go a little deeper…