Friday, July 06, 2007

Crtl Alt Del

I think you know the commercial with the “Easy Button”. Press the red button and each daily task becomes ‘Easy”. I don’t want one of those buttons, but I would love to have a reset button.
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to ‘reset’ and start over if we’ve made a mistake, or found out that we had been wrong about an important issue?
What do you do? If you admit that you have been wrong, you will be humiliated. Friends with whom you used to laugh would be laughing at you. It will be confirmed in their minds that you are WRONG.
But you could avoid all of that if you were able to “Reset” back to a baseline of zero and begin again on the right path, keeping your ego from the battering of humiliation.
“Choose your words carefully, in case you have to eat them later.”

When I was a young Christian, I felt as if I were swimming up stream against a raging river. It was as if the entire world were pulling me in one direction, away from God, and it was a struggle each day. But God preserved me, and I’m still here by His Grace.
But I had to “Reset” without a button. I had to admit that I had been wrong about Christ, and wrong about the world. Because the world that I had been a part of all of my life was at enmity with God. And it was very humiliating to admit that I had been wrong. Believe it or not, I used to be kind of a ‘smart Alec’!
“Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up.”

If someone never admits to a fault, never humbles themselves, if their pride doesn’t allow them to admit to a single mistake, if their egos are so fragile that they will do anything to avoid being humbled-watch out! Pride goes before a fall, and great indeed is the fall of someone who has put himself high up on a pedestal.
Can you recall the last world leader who admitted to a mistake, and humbled himself? Can you imagine Hill or Bill Clinton, John McCain, Trent Lott or Ted Kennedy admitting that they were wrong about anything?
Now think about some Christian you know-I hope that they are humble, as none of us are anything special apart from what God does in us, in our lives.
Ironically, some have called me ‘arrogant’, as I operate on the assumption that God is in His heaven, and “they” feel that anyone that certain of something without ‘proof’ must be arrogant. It’s been said that I have a closed mind, as it is not open to other possibilities-Buddha, Allah, Pope Joey, whomever.
But once I humbled myself before God, He gave me the ‘proof’ that others in their…arrogance…refuse to accept. And I will never need a reset button for my faith in God. But for everything else…button, button, who’s got the button?

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