While waking this morning, I had a picture come to mind that ended by a song going through my head titled; ‘My Jesus I Love Thee’.
In this vision, I saw a long room filled with stacks and stacks of files, all bulging with countless sheets of paper. They were stacked on shelves, on the floor, and on a desk; even some on a couple of chairs. Some were covered with dust, while others looked fairly new.
As I walked into that room, I glanced at some of the tabs on those files and was surprised to see my name on them. So, in my curiosity, I checked out the rest and found that it was my name on all of them. I couldn’t believe that there would be so many.
With no one to restrict my actions and curiosity getting the better of me, I took one of the files from one of the larger stacks and opened it. As I looked, I found myself looking at all my medical files! I checked out a few of them, and then moved to the next stack. This one contained all my financial transactions, while the next one showed all the vehicles I had owned.
All of the files I checked, covered some aspect of my life that the world had recorded on paper; from employment and all the files associated with that,, to all the articles I had written and more; it just seemed to go on and on. I was thoroughly amazed at just how much information there was; as a matter of fact, I was beginning to think, ‘Wow, I really was something to have garnered so much information’!
Then as I approached the end of the room, I saw someone taking all my files and throwing them into a furnace! Armful after armful went into it and I lifted my arm as if to signal this man to stop. He took one look at me and just kept on destroying all that valuable information. As I opened my mouth to shout at him, no sound came out of my mouth. So my hands opened in a questioning supplication at which point he turned to me and stated, “All this information has been transcribed to a memory stick; we don’t need all this paper anymore.”
With that, he handed me a small memory stick and pointed me to a door I had not seen before. As I walked through that door, I saw thousands of lines of thousands of people; all with memory sticks in their hands. There were just too many people to count. Moving along, we were instructed to deposit our memory sticks into a barrel that looked just like a garbage barrel. As different people approached this barrel they all looked at the stick in their hand. Many just threw the stick into the barrel while a few would not. If they would not let go of it, they were prevented from going further while all those who deposited their stick went forward in the line.
When finally it was my turn, I looked at the stick in my hand, and was torn with what to do with it; after all, it contained everything about me. Without it I had no identity. Looking at those who had deposited theirs, I saw a look of peace on their faces while those who retained their sticks had faces contorted with worry and grief. My decision was made at that moment and I threw mine into the barrel.
Immediately I saw a picture of Jesus holding out his hands to me and his voice assured me that I indeed did have an identity; henceforth I would be known as a child of the King! All the rest was dispensed with, and I was a new creation. And all because of what he accomplished on the cross.
Is it any wonder that the first thing through my mind was ‘My Jesus I Love Thee, I Know Though Art Mine”?
Chris