Watching out for Number One is an all-time favorite national past time. We do it with an addictive ease.  Billy Joel captured the essence of this compulsion with a song appropriately entitled My Life: “I don't care what you say anymore, this is my life! Go ahead with your own life and leave me alone.”

The complexities of the human heart are myriad, but one thing is certain; it is bent toward selfishness.  We zero in on me and mine so automatically that we don’t even recognize its negative impact on our relationships.

We can turn Daffy Duck’s greedy me, me, me, mine, mine, mine into a mantra wired with sacred overtones.  The glorification of individuality has reached an apex in our culture, yet we think nothing of its excesses.

This is my life!  On a daily basis we are assaulted by advertisements and marketing strategies contrived to appeal to the latent me and mine compulsion within each of us.

Our friends and coworkers talk with an animated determination about deserving this illicit relationship or that luxury simply because this is my life!  Go ahead with your own life and leave me alone.  

The statistics are frightening:  Marriages unravel, causing a profusion of broken lives and disenfranchised children, and all too often, the catalyst is self-absorbed adults insisting on personal autonomy and happiness above all else.

With the tones of me, me, me, mine, mine, mine ringing from the bell towers, we have produced a population that routinely discards relationships by the side of the road like so much garbage to be carted away on trash day. 

Regardless of cost, me and mine must be satisfied to find fulfillment.  The incessant call urging us to indulge every whim that arises is so ingrained in the woof and weave of our culture as to be virtually respectable.

Personal responsibility is an echo from a bygone era.  Working things through to resolution is an entirely foreign concept.  Words that touch on issues of accountability are forgotten remnants confined to the realm of irrelevancy.

Our society celebrates me and mine with gleeful abandon. Unless we are extremely vigilant self-centered attitudes will creep in and take root in our lives.

This is my life! There is certain fallacy in that statement. Yes, it reflects what we esteem nowadays, but it is premised on a lie. No one owns his or her life. We are indebted to our Creator for life itself; we are indebted to our Creator for everything. Everything comes from God; everything belongs to God. Obviously the human race has a blockhead quality because those truths remain largely unlearned.

We seem to think that God has some conniving scheme or grand design on our riches, so we cling to them with clenched fists.  We chase after our wants with a single-minded focus that leaves wrecked lives and lost dreams in our wake. 

The me and mine viewpoint distorts reality and distances us from our heavenly Father.  We pursue our every passion hoping to find pleasure and satisfaction, only to discover the elusive nature of our pursuit.  No one will ever find meaningful joy or contentment estranged from their Creator.

Our lives belong to God for he created each of us, and then paid for our redemption by stepping out of eternity into time; he experienced life as a lowly peasant and itinerant rabbi from Nazareth. 

When Jesus of Nazareth’s grace-soaked theology offended the guardians of religious purity, he was tortured and killed on a Roman cross.  His sacrificial death atoned for our sin and was full payment for our eternal souls; we have been bought at an excruciating price.

Contrary to our delusional mindset, God has no interest whatsoever in all the possessions we have accumulated that we believe belong to us. Why would he?

God already owns everything. Scripture tells us that what God desires is our heart, for where our heart is engaged there our treasure will be also. When God has our heart, all the things we cherish will be wrapped up in the plans, purposes and will of God for our lives.

This is my life! No, not exactly; our lives are not our own. In the throes of divine inspiration a king in ancient Israel wrote: “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.”

From everlasting to everlasting God is God; this is his world and we exist as a result of his love. Our lives take on more and more significance as that truth increases in strength, while me and mine becomes a puny ninety pound weakling.

As Captain Jean-Luc Picard was wont to say: “Make it so.”