Amnesia

I went to sleep praying and woke up with a head ache. I must have prayed toooo hard.

You see, I have a lot on my mind at this point of my life. We’ve just entered the year 2008 and life is going in a different direction than I had imagined.

All of that brought me back to the lifelong question, “Who am I”? Which reminds me of several movies I have seen which depict people who have suffered accident or loss, or injury or disease and have lost their identity. They can’t remember who they are.

Many methods are used to help them try to regain their true identity. Some are seeing old friends, hearing favorite songs, eating favorite foods, visiting familiar places, going back to childhood surroundings and the worst, shock therapy.

What will it take for me to regain my true identity? Would I even know if I found it? How will I begin the journey? Do I even want to find out?

I started out life at an early age and close to my mother. Life began in a small mid-west town and at a time when the streets were still dirt roads. When you got off the highway which ran through the town, you were on a dirt or gravel road. Things like this are part of who I am, good, bad or indifferent. The two room school house that housed six grades, three in one room and three in the other. One teacher for each room. Many moves from our small town to the capital city and back again and as a child, never knowing why. This is a part of who I am. Amnesia would have been preferred to some of the memories, but … it’s part of who I am.

I’m going to take a large leap to another dimension, that of a spiritual nature. I must never forget or have selective amnesia about who I am spiritually. The price was too great and the suffering too intense for me to forget. The Crux of the matter, is the crux of the matter. The Cross, an instrument of death. We wear it around our necks with the glimmer of high polished gold or sterling silver on a chain to match. As one of our Pastors said last week, “Would you wear an “electric chair” around your neck, or a “hangman’s noose”, or a “guillotine”? Where do I find my true identity? How do I find my true identity? Who am I? Who’s am I?

God gave us an incredible gift, that of free will, an ability to choose. If you have ask Jesus Christ to be your Savior, you still have choices. The choices are, to obey or to disobey. You can never say, “Oh, I forgot”, or “I didn’t know” or have “selective amnesia”. You are accountable from day one of your spiritual journey about the choices you make. You can’t blame it on your parents, or your teachers, or your boss, or your spouse. When you become a Christian, the Holy Spirit comes to live within you and He will lead you into all righteousness. No Excuses. Now the choice is yours. Shock therapy or obedience?
Jan. 4, 2008 Ron E.