Welcome to 2017. I do not know what you have carried over to 2017 but I suggest you carry only what is useful, and that can only be hand luggage. Look at 2017 as an airplane and not a boat, bus or train. You see with a bus or train, you can carry anything as long as you can pay for it. Travelling by air is very particular regardless of how much money you have, you do not turn a passenger plane into a cargo plane. On the passenger plane, luggage and baggage are very limited and defined.
As we are in the early stages of plane 2017, let me ask you as your pastor and host: What are you carrying and why and how is it going to be of use throughout the 365 days and upon reaching your destination? I mean, how comfortable are you going to be throughout this year? Are you carrying stuff that will inconvenience you, your fellow passengers, and the plane all together? Or it is something beneficial for your life? Why don’t you leave 2016 trash to 2016? Why do you really have to carry it to 2017 and create yourself a daily schedule of sweeping the trash you carried yourself to 2017? Don’t you think if you had not carried it to this year, you would not have to sweep and attend to it every day of your new year?
Listen. I know you can afford to pay for your trash, but as your fellow passenger, I am telling you this is not a cargo plane. You cannot afford to risk our (your family, your friends, your church, your workmates) safety with your excess baggage. You cannot assume your stuff to be too useful and more essential than the people you are with or the destination you are heading to. You need to leave your unforgiving heart in 2016, I know it makes you feel better when you revenge but it is eating you up and hurting you more than those you have refused to forgive. Un-forgiveness is a cancer and the problem with cancer cells is that they feed on positive cells and as they eat them up. The disease that begun with a toe spreads to the entire body and sometimes the only alternative treatment is cutting off the entire leg.
Resolve and pledge to forgive and let go of your anger. Throw away your anger luggage, and trim your tongue for better speech and positive words. Do not stop talking about people; it is okay to talk about people only that in 2017 you need to praise people instead of persecuting people with your tongue. Talk about the good they have done not the things they have failed. Look and focus on the good side of your fellow sinners. Appreciate and celebrate them. Men, who have been abusive to your wives, make yourself a better person and do not beat up your wife on the plane.
I just want all of us to look at ourselves as if we are on the plane surrounded by strangers, and going to a different and a better country. How dare we then fight on a plane? We are traveling, let all our anger, our addictions, our sins, etc. be suspended for 365 days. It is very important to look at this 2017 year as a plane, where our responsibility to fellow passengers is taking care of our very selves. Love one another; after all, you are all pilgrims.
If someone is on the plane and he is coughing, we cannot afford not to care since it will spread to all of us on the plane. Listen to me friend, forget about the MIND YOUR BUSINESS gimmick. In 2017, your business is your neighbor. Your business is not only your biological children or relatives but even that security guard, that widow on the next seat, that old man, and that rich man. The Bible has this imperative in Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ”. When God has lightened your burdens, He asks you to do the same for others.
Minding your Business will not build a community but it will instead break it into weak pieces. On the plane, our tribes, religions, political beliefs, levels of education do not matter, what matters is that we are passengers on the same plane. Let us not fight and eat-up others as grasshoppers do when captured and placed in the same bottle. The more we help others on the plane to reach safely, the better we secure our arrival. The problem with HATE is that it turns you into a locked door without a key. Such a door does not allow others to enter, and neither does it enter itself since it has to keep locked to prohibit others to enter. Some people have been a locked door without a key, they do not allow others to enter and neither do they enter themselves. All they do is wake up each morning is to ensure others fail, and in so doing they do nothing for themselves too.
Do not fight on the plane, you might crash it and once it crashes, it does not matter who was right and who was wrong in the argument, the reality will be that You have crushed… That is all. Your marriage or relationship is a plane, be the flight attendant and take care of your fellow passenger. Your workplace or office is a plane, so, take care and nurse the egos of your fellow passengers in the names of workmates, clients, and bosses. You are on the plane, please do not steal from your fellow passengers, and do not hurt anyone in the plane’s bathroom thinking you will not meet them anywhere. They are on the plane, the plane is a small thing, do not assume you are hiding and no one knows what you do in the dark.
Well, you love alcohol, and when you get drunk, it turns you into a mess. Why do not you excuse yourself from alcohol for 365 days? Help yourself from the embarrassment on the plane. Do not smoke on the plane, if you do, you turn other passengers into passive smokers or actually blow-up the entire plane. Smoking can wait. I know you love women/men and you are sex-addict, but is it really worth it to have sex in a plane’s bathroom? Can’t it wait? I know we are human beings and human beings always carry cargo. This cargo can be materialistic and the heaviest cargo can be behavioral and psychological cargo. But let us understand the difference between 2017 and 2016. 2017 is a passenger plane, while 2016 is a cargo plane. Please put all your cargo on plane 2016 and walk into 2017 as passengers without the cargo.
I know it is not going to be easy to just toss away this long held cargo out of our lives, I know some of us are so attached to our cargo that we have become dependent to it, but we should know that there cannot be a construction without a deconstruction. Some things need to be broken down for others to be, built in the very space. You need to put aside all the cargo boyfriends and girlfriends that you have been carrying all these years. You need to release yourself from the cargo of unnecessary debts. It is high time you put down the cargo of excuses and right reasons of not doing the right thing. Put down the cargo of fear, doubt and mediocrity. I just want you to know that 2017 is not a road, or water transport but a flight. You are going to fly but you cannot fly swiftly and to the right heights if you are carrying more than your weight. Lighten up and fly. IT IS A FLIGHT. You do not need cargo. In security protocols there is no safe and innocent cargo, anything can be hidden in that cargo. Terrorists can always take advantage of the cargo and blow-up the entire plane.
It is high time you put down the cargo of excuses and right reasons of not doing the right thing. Put down the cargo of fear, doubt and mediocrity. I just want you to know that 2017 is not a road, or water transport but a flight. You are going to fly but you cannot fly swiftly and to the right heights if you are carrying more than your weight. Lighten up and fly. IT IS A FLIGHT. You do not need cargo. In security protocols there is no safe and innocent cargo, anything can be hidden in that cargo. Terrorists can always take advantage of the cargo and blow-up the entire plane.
5 Ways to drop the Cargo
- Make the decision to let it go. Things do not disappear on their own.
- Express your pain — and your responsibility.
- Stop being the victim and blaming others.
- Focus on the present — the here and now — and joy.
- Forgive them — and yourself. Because un-forgiveness is a cancer.
My friend there is nothing like a new year, time is never new, it is what is done in that time that makes time new and different. The things we do on 31st December and on the 1st January are what makes the difference, otherwise if we did nothing, time would be the usual thing. This what I am telling you, 2017 is a passenger flight and not a cargo plane? Do things differently. Wake up on early, work harder, love better, do something – change in Jesus’ name.
The Bible says in Psalms 55:22 that: “Cast your burden upon the LORD and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken”. Turn God into your cargo plane. Do not put your cargo on any other man, or entrust it with any other institution. It is only God who will help you. He has invited all of us who have suffered through the past year with these words in Mathew 11:28-30: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light”. Load God not any other crashing plane.
God bless you and I wish you a safe flight and a better landing in Jesus’ name Amen
Pr. I.T. White
@Think & Become (Inspirational Link) and
iTiS Well of Worship Ministries John 4:24
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 