Entitlement can corrupt us quickly. The sly smile of the American dream flashes a toothy white grin at us. Yet behind those teeth, a rotting stench wallows up. It is a beautiful dream, a beautiful dream set on a foundation of ashes.
Be it magazines claiming both how to have affairs and yet stay with who you are dating, sterile packaged food containers in a supermarket that state the ingredients as being natural, T.V. commercials that claim you cannot be popular unless you use zit removal cream. We are always being bombarded by the sickening mind war of the self-entitled. Trained up to value OUR rights. OUR stuff. OUR freedom. OUR privacy. It’s not all wrong right?
A great poet once said, “Freedom isn’t free, Freedom costs a buck oh fiveeeeeee.”
I awoke in a tent in Toccoa Falls Georgia. We pitched our tents miles from where the 101st Airborne trained before D-Day. My tent was a little damp, but none the worse for wear. The week started off filled with rain so the wisdom in us welled up and decided to protect our stuff. In haste we all placed our packs into a brown tarp. I thought I would do the servant-hearted thing and move other peoples backpacks before I moved my own. During that time, someone decided to move my pack as well and put it a little bit further out then the others.
As the day went on and I was being trained and learning nifty life-changing stuff, when I heard the familiar sound of rain on an auditorium roof. Or a Jamaican steel drum band. I can’t ignore any possibilities. In the seminar I began to cringe a little.
Inside the backpack sat my most prized possession. The most expensive thing I own. My Macbook Pro. It has traveled across the entire U.S. twice, lived in Taiwan, visited Hong Kong. We are traveling buddies. Sometimes I would curl up with Mac and whisper nice things like, “Steve would make a good father in law if he wasn’t so dead.” and “I really love your siblings, Pad and Pod.” (They were made in Asia and adopted, thus the names)
I sat for hours in the seminar. I loved listening but a nagging voice inside my head began to whisper dark thoughts, “Do you even love me Jake? I’m cold and in the rain.”
“I know Mac, it’ll be all right! I know!”
I became anxious and felt as if I was Leonardo Di Caprio in Inception, constantly having my crazy dead wife miss Macbook run a train into my thoughts.
I was anxious like a young boy crushing on a young lady, hoping they would get a slight memory together, yet utterly fearful and terrified at the full weight of risk.
When everything ended, I arrived at my pack.
It had been soaked. Soaked so bad I would wear moldy clothes for the next week. I tried over the next few days to get my Macbook running. It meant I would be out a laptop for the race. I don’t have the money at all to get a new one.
There it was broken. As I tried to start it in vain. On the verge of being perturbed or far greater forms of anger.
I just… was calm. It just didn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter. Why?
I don’t deserve a Macbook Pro. I am just so blessed to have so much anyways.
It’s so easy to get frustrated at things that years ago we couldn’t even fathom having. I remember being frustrated in 2001 at slow internet, low storage space, bad cell service, bad battery life on a lot of electronics.
Now if you were to ask me what I get annoyed with about phones and computers today it would be slow internet, low storage space, bad cell service, and bad battery life.
The fact is everything has improved but my heart still desires better.
Freaking quail. I probably would’ve asked for quail.
Sometimes we place so much stock in things. Things that we honestly can’t bring with us past the grave. We say at my camp in Florida, “Only two things last forever, the word of God and the souls of men.”
Paul told Timothy that Godliness with contentment is great gain. That really with food, shelter, and a relationship with God we can exist and be happy and blessed.
That’s WORLD SHATTERING. Even the most destitute Americans normally have so much stuff. We have so much.
I looked at the broken Mac. The people around me all soaked and tired.
I felt entitlement breathing down my neck. “Do you deserve this? Isn’t it wrong you have no computer now?”
The whispers of entitlement smelled filthy. Rotting halitosis wafting toward my nostrils. The American dream.
Hideous.
So I put the broken Mac away. I mourned the loss in my soul for just a brief second. I smiled. And I decided, if this week is to train me to reach the least. It should start with losing what I have. I should press into brokenness. I should brush off the most insulting losses of property. In the end, property never would’ve lasted forever. I felt sorrow for a slight moment. Sorrow that property has so much power over all of us. There is so much more to life than things.
Just like that, I lost one of my prized possessions. I cared not. It really in the long run is trivial compared to the joy and blessing I felt last week heaped upon me. I met so many amazing people and prayed, laughed, grew, and rejoiced all last week.
I have no computer for the race (I am praying God WILL provide one). MY gear is all soaked. I still smell like mold. I am tired. Yet I am extremely joyful, content, and blown away by what I learned at camp (More on that later). What I earned was so much more valuable. Contentment.
I mean who doesn’t like moldy smelling excited people who are contented? Hippy’s! Ain’t nobody ever hated a hippy.
So what property in your life would mess you up if you lost it? Why? Do you feel entitlement ever rearing up in your soul? Maybe you need to give thanksgiving to God for what you do have. And sometimes for what you don’t 🙂
deadtorise 