“Watching our lives flash before us” has become a cliché to say we have had a close call with death. Of course, some people actually have faces and memories flash before them as they are reminded of what is important in their lives, but rarely do we have sort of a record of our lives unfold like a rolodex or a video on super fast forward.
Picture this...at about 8:30 in the morning, I went out to an open space near my house, and I began to open up garbage bag after garbage bag to burn papers for about eight hours in the heat and humidity of a sunny day in tropical Accra. Nicole and I had been fortunate in the fact that we able to ship some possessions along with a few other families over to Africa when we moved here, but as many people do when they move, a lot of the boxes of our memories and files became boxes we would deal with when we had time—you know when we would get “there.” Perhaps you have moved and simply taken a filing cabinet or a box of hand written notes and said, “When I have time…” Now, we are moving from Ghana, and besides a very small handful of boxes of pictures and books, we are planning on leaving the country with the allotted two suitcases at 50 pounds each. I cannot describe the freedom I feel from liquidating our stuff. In looking at what I will pack in my two bags, I am incredibly limited to what I will be allowed to keep.
Unfortunately, papers that are not tied to immigration, identity, or my schooling just are not at the top of the list, and I have been forced to sort and eliminate just about all of them. Yes, I had saved all types of things. Fee paid cards from my time in college. Bank statements. Bulletins from my first church. A phone list of fellow employees from my first job. Church directories. And yes, those nice notes people had written me to tell me how great of a guy I am!
I wish I could have kept some of them, but being limited in what I can keep, I had to discard most of them. Of course, I would have loved to have simply put these items in the garbage, but this would have been unwise because of Africa’s own “recycling program” whereby people sort through your garbage. Whether it is the neighborhood children, the guys who come with the truck, or the people who actually pick through it at the landfill, anything that is reusable will be reused. I just could not risk putting anything personal in the garbage as I know it will pass through the hands of others. And for those who are conscious about the carbon footprint of a fire, I had brought a paper shredder to Ghana, but it did not survive the conversion to 220 electricity!
So back to our picture of me standing by a fire in scorching heat. In order to make sure my documents were securely destroyed, I had to personally stand over and feed my nineteen Hefty bags of papers to the flames. Memories galore! As I put one stack in, I had to “deal” with the memories of that season in my life. At moments, I realized I needed to forgive certain people, and at others, I was able to thank God for special relationships. I found myself in a Brother Lawrence day of constant prayer. Throughout the day, I was also sensing the Lord remind me of how life is brief and how God is eternal. Being in a less liturgical environment, I missed participating or leading an Ash Wednesday service this year. Incidentally, my Lenten season has been solidified by the memories of releasing and serving Jesus with only my “staff, one tunic, and my sandals” (Mark 6:8). In a serendipitous moment, I found a palm frond from a previous Palm Sunday I had saved for a future Ash Wednesday. As the palm went up in flames, it was if the Lord was speaking to me in a manifest way: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
*Most of this post is taken from a Note that Kirk wrote on Facebook this morning. Join me in lifting them up to the Lord this week!
Soundtrack: Consuming Fire, Third Day
