Starting Over

"I die every day!" 
—1Corinthians 15:31

I had a teacher who once said, "My best days are those when I die before 7 a.m." His practice was to meditate early in the morning and to surrender to God everything he could—his past, his future, his thoughts, his feeling, and his very self.

How would this day be if I began it by dying? My alarm goes off at 6:45. I imagine my dying. I look backward at my life with a sense of gratefulness and thanksgiving. It is an awesome gift to have lived. 

I give it all back to God, asking God to use whatever good I may have done as a seed for some future goodness. I look at my self-centeredness and failures with true regret and place them into God's hands, trusting God’s divine mercy and compassion revealed through Christ.

It's over. I’m thankful for it all. I'm sorry for all that I have hurt. I can ask God's blessing on all that I care for, and entrust everyone and everything to God's creative, divine love. I surrender the future into God's care. Then, finished, I can rest. Quit. Giving up everything, even life itself. Presenting it all as an offering to God in silent darkness. "I die every day!"

Then 7:00 a.m. comes! To rise from death is to participate in the resurrection of Jesus. To rise into life after having given to God the good and bad of the past, having surrendered the future in faith, and having let go of whatever attachments I cling to right now is to rise renewed, empowered by the grace of God, filled with thankfulness and clean courage. 

What can life do to me when I have already died? After death, everything is a gift. Not a bad way to start the day.

Into your hands, O God, I commend my spirit. Amen.
 

Copyright ©2005 Lowell E. Grisham.