I do not have a lot to my name. Two books and a clock from one grandmother. An army footlocker from one grandfather and a wallet from the other grandfather. I’m sure there is more but those stick out in my mind. I try to keep life simple.
Just as ritual circumcision cuts away the foreskin
as an external symbol of dedicated covenant commitment,
you must genuinely dedicate yourselves to the LORD
and get rid of everything that hinders your commitment to me,
people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem.
If you do not, my anger will blaze up like a flaming fire against you
that no one will be able to extinguish.
That will happen because of the evil you have done.–Jeremiah 4:4
I try to read at least one chapter of the Bible each morning but sometimes I do not get that far. Recently I only got the first four verses of Jeremiah 4. I read the words “get rid of everything that hinders your commitment to me” and decided I needed to purge my life of some things. I thought I should try to purge one thing per day. Quite a lofty goal. Day one I gave up a data set. I held on to this data for way too long. I smashed it with a screwdriver. So I put on some music – one song specifically (Κανείς Δεν Ξέρει) and realized I should give that up too. There are songs I do not want to give up. Songs that remind me of things I should not remember.
It seems silly to me but I want that song (and others like it) because I want the feeling it provokes in me – the sadness. Feelings that make me believe I am human for a few minutes. But these feelings do not glorify God. A verse earlier the Lord says through Jeremiah “you must break your rebellious will and make a new beginning” – really the first four verses are great for meditation. It is time for a new beginning. Time to get rid of everything that hinders my commitment to God. Time to seek His glory in everything I do. As if this wasn’t the case before. As if I should only have started just now to think about the glory of God.
I like to think grandly and typically fail bitterly. Even in my failure, God is glorified. I say that not as an excuse to fail but as a challenge to myself not to.