"I'm going on a trip and I'm taking my water bottle, my banana, my Bible, my fruit, my acorn, my scuba diving shoes, my trophy, my ziplock bag, my pet crab....."
Have you ever played that game? My dad and brothers used to play all the time and the list would get longer and longer with what we would be taking. It was a memory game and you played until someone couldn't remember everything and in just the right order.
Well what if life was like that? What if life was this big journey to heaven? And we get to choose who we are taking with us and what we are taking with us. What experiences do we want to draw upon forever and which ones do we want to let go? What words do we want to meditate on and let shape our lives? What feelings do we want to hold close to us and claim as our own?
And in every part of life, every stage of the journey, every cave, every mountain, every garden-- after we made it through, what if we re-evaluated what we were going through life with and chose what things we didn't really need and what we wanted to cling too forever.
For example, I just spent six months in Kenya, what do I want to leave there in Kenya and what do I want to take home with me and experience or dwell upon every day of living in the states? One thing I want to leave over in Kenya is distrust. One thing I want to take with me every day is peace and slowness and purposefulness of life. One thing I want to leave in Kenya is the dirtiness, the sadness. One thing I want to bring with me here is the joy of service.
Friends, we have a choice on how we will view life. Will we see life through lens of gratitude and God's faithfulness or will we dwell upon the negative? Will we choose to think thoughts of kindness and goodness or thoughts of anger and bitterness? And it's awesome that we can choose to let some things go forever, while choosing to store other things deep into our memories and closer to our hearts.
Hebrews 12:1 Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race set before us.