The new computer sat in a box for several days….
Finally I opened the box, set the computer on a nearby desk, and plugged it in…
I turned it on. It looked great…
My wife came into the room…
“Look at this new computer! Doesn’t it look great? I asked. ”
“Is it faster than the old one?”
“I haven’t used it yet. But doesn’t it look great?”
Every day I looked at the computer and in a quiet voice asked the same rhetorical question.
“Doesn’t it look great?”
Every night my wife asked, “How’s the new computer?”
Every night I answered, “Looks great!”
And every night she smiled a quiet smile that said “You still haven’t used it yet, have you?”
It was time to switch. But I was comfortable with my old computer.
I’d learned to live with its eccentricities…
It put out so much heat I closed the office doors in winter and turned off the furnace.
The loud buzz of its fan helped me concentrate when I wrote.
And besides it would be a lot of work to transfer all the files and untangle 12 years of cables and cords.
That attitude reminded me of the Isrealites complaining about life in the desert after they left slavery in Egypt…
“Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” (Exodus 16:3)
Continuing in a Biblical frame of mind, I told myself…
Therefore as the person of the new computer…get rid of slow performance and loud noises and a pile of cables and wires…
Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering C olossians 3:12
Turn off the old computer…
…put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life…Ephesians 4:22
Turn on the new computer…
…put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness…Ephesians 4:24
Through His Grace, God has saved us and put a new life in us…
Will fear of the future or comfort with the past make us treat those gifts like prized trophies on the shelf?
Or will we choose to believe in God, put on our new life–and letting it flow from us, watch in awe as He transforms the world?
“He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water’.” John 7:38
