Untangling

Your life is like a bowl of spagetti. It’s tangled. All of your experiences are mixed together, wrapped in each other. Unfortunately, those bad memories can overtake the good. That day you broke up becomes a noodle strangling your ideas of love. That moment you found out your grade was less than satisfactory becomes a noodle that is drenched with sadness. That day you ruined your career, or you betrayed a friend, you made your mom cry, or you got in a fight…those regretful moments become a never-ending noodle that you can never seem to finish eating.

You dwell on that bad memory, you keep slurping the endless noodle… If you don’t let go and take a bite, you are going to end up choking on the negativity.

Eating the toxic strands of your life is not healthy. Constantly remembering, dwelling, pondering, imagining, thinking, digesting…soon you will be overtaken.

Our bad memories, our failings are hard to forget about because they are so a part of us. We have built our lives around them, entangled all of our emotions in the past. When we mess up, it’s hard to erase that mistake.

Of course if we have wronged someone, we should do something to at least try to fix the problem. Pay the debt. Forgive. Apologize. Go to jail. Admit your mistake. Humble yourself. We should do this because we have been forgiven. Jesus Christ died so that we would be forgiven, the slate washed clean. He forgives even if the person you wronged will not. Jesus, who will forgive the person you wronged even if you insist against it.

So you think it is no big deal to continue on dwelling on the past. Guilt is okay in your book. Anger and frustration are your best friends. You like eating the noodle of your disgusting past. But don’t you know that you are choking, tangled when what you cannot stop thinking about. When you let the past overwhelm you, you cannot move on.

No one really wants to be slurping on the sad thoughts their whole life. It may feel good to keep the anger. It may feel good to keep being jealous. But you will choke.

You have an opportunity to be erased from the old ways. Someone else can eat those bad noodles and help create good noodles in the pasta of your life.

Jesus has paid the penalty of your guilt. He has eaten the toxic noodles, causing death. He died eating up your sin so that you might live eating good food.

Jesus has forgiven you. All you have to do if forgive yourself. Bite away the bad thoughts. They do not need to exist. Forget about the past plaguing you at dinner, at night, in the morning, at the dentist.

Paul, a man who once killed thousands of Christian, talks of the importance of forgetting the past, of letting go of the bad noodles. “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

As soon as we let go, as quickly as we release the noodle strangling our plate, we are more free to do greater things and eat beyond our limitations into a God centered path.