Books in Our Lives

Matthew 20:28  That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not be served - and then to give away his life in exchange for the many who are held hostage."

The speaker at a large church in Chicago came to the front of the room and began talking about the impacts that affect how we live our lives.  Lined up across the front of the stage were three platforms.  On each platform was a closed book..  As he spoke, he opened the first book and called it “our past”.  He tore out a few pages and tucked those pages in the book on the center platform called, “our present”.

So often we grow up by taking some of the worse or best times of our lives and carrying them on to our present lives.  It can shape us to make decisions that affect those around us.  Little things that drive Lynnette crazy come from events in my past that I have carried into the present.  Most of those I really want to forget, but they just creep back.

Soon the speaker in this church takes pages again out of our past and places them into the third book, called “our future”.  He noted that he completely by-passed the present.

As we are growing up we are sometimes are reminded of our failures.  Maybe we were not too athletic in sports.  Therefore when we become adults, we try to live our past though our children and push them to be the best at sports.   

Yet so often we take pages from our past and place them in the future.  We try to be what we could not be as a child.  As the speaker noted,  “We make up whatever we need to say or do to “prove” we did not fail as a child.” 

You see for years as a young man, I was told about my failures as a child.  I can still recall my father saying that I was never going to be successful in life.  I can still recall, “You don’t have enough sense to pound sand down a rat hole”.  Or “Your about as smart as a hill of beans.”  Therefore a part of me pushed to change the past, prove him wrong, and make a better future so the past could be forgotten.  Still a work in process.

Jesus is one of the great parts of the past that belongs in our present life books, because He is to only one who can give us a great future book.  His life and death is one of hope and grace that takes every failure of our past and throws those pages away. 

We don’t need to keep the pages of our past or present because we have some great pages in our future book.  Many times it takes a conscious effort to give the Lord our past, but the new pages of your book includes eternal life and a close relationship with the Savior of the world.