Thursday, January 25, 2018

Your Password Will Expire in Five Days
By Lisa Boyer

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called
children of God! And that is what we are!”

I don’t know about you, but I have a LOT of passwords. In fact, I have six different passwords at work alone, and for security reasons, one of those passwords has to be changed every three months. I hate getting the “your password will expire in five days” message because it’s so hard to think of a new password that means enough to me to remember it.

Once, when I got the dreaded “your password will expire in five days” message, I decided to try something different: an abbreviation of a phrase from a song. It was my favorite song at the time, so I thought I would easily remember it. But the next morning, I sat at my keyboard struggling to remember my password once again. I remembered what song I had been thinking of, but had to remember what words I used and whether I used the whole word or just the first letter of the word, etc.

As it turned out, my new password was the hardest password to remember ever! It was really frustrating until I came up with a phrase to clue me in to what my password was. Each morning, I would sit at my keyboard and quietly say to myself, “Hello, child of the One True King,” concentrating on each word as I typed the password I had coded out of that phrase. Saying that phrase made me smile every single morning!

About a month later, I noticed that my attitude was changing at work and realized it was because of my new password! Concentrating on those words “hello, child of the One True King” was reminding me that I wasn’t just a child of the One True King at church and at home, I was a child of the One True King at work, as well. Each morning, I was being reminded by my password of His love for me as His child. My Father - - God - - was in charge and I could trust Him, even at work.

Three months passed and “your password will expire in five days” appeared on my computer once again. I was sad to think of how much I was going to miss that password... but then my new favorite song came to mind and I knew that a password about God’s great grace was going to be a wonderful way to start my mornings!

GOING DEEPER:
1.  Is it time to add a new positive phrase to your morning routine?

FURTHER READING:


Lisa is married to Ted and they have two sons in college. Lisa serves as an event photographer at Oakwood and wherever else she is needed.