Selfishness

Do you ever catch yourself being selfish? Do you ever question your motives when doing the things you do? While we may not always self-inspect our motives, I'm sure that in moments of sheer honesty we'll all admit to being selfish from time to time. Today I realized I have been selfish the last couple of days...

Because of Christmas, we've been receiving boxes with Christmas gifts, candy, and some hard to get food items from friends and family back home. What we haven't received, though, is the new external hard drive I ordered because the hard drives on both of our laptops are completely full with our videos and pictures (and other stuff, of course).

As box after box has arrived, instead of accepting the blessings from so many people, I've found myself getting more and more ticked off because it's not here yet. (You see, my hard drive should've taken only 7 or 8 days to arrive. I'm now on day 11 and counting. And, to top it off, everybody else has receieved boxes that were sent after my hard drive was shipped.)

To top it off, I can't seem to get it out of my mind that some sticky fingered postal worker somewhere is sitting at home enjoying my hard drive while I sit here being mocked by the many boxes and packages that aren't mine. It's not FAIR!

Of course, there's a lesson in there for me. It's a pretty simple lesson but one that is very difficult to learn and apply consistently. What is it? It is that when we focus only on ourselves our world shrinks down to such an extent that we cannot (or do not want) to see all of the blessing that the Lord gives us each and every day. The God who clothed the lillies of the fields and feeds the birds of the sky is the same God who cares for each one of us. Does He care about my hard drive? Well, probably yes and no. "Yes", because it will be used to provide us with some of our American culture here and in Chad, and "No" because it is only a stupid hard drive.

I'm ashamed to admit that I let my priorities get so out of whack that I began to see this piece of man-made electronics equipment for more than it really is. Any time I (or any one of us) lets this happen with the things of this world we are feeding the fires of lust and covetousness and selfishness. Certainly we all know the world tells us that things like lust and covetousness and selfishness are good and admirable traits but the Bible has another name for them: Sin.

Please pray that the Lord will drive out all of my selfishness and I will do the same for you. You'd think that after 30 years of walking with the Lord some of my warts would've been removed by the Compound W of the Holy Spirit. Instead, with each passing day I seem to be more and more aware of my sin and my need for the Savior's Blood.... (but that's a topic for another blog entry).

Wishing you a very Merry (and Selfless) Christmas.

sf