The other day while last-minute Christmas shopping, I was attempting to find a parking spot. I saw one that required going around a corner in a nonlighted area. As I turned the corner, there was a grocery buggy that someone had left against the curbing after emptying its contents into their car. I didn’t see it in time, so I ran alongside it and scratched my vehicle.

The immediate thought was, “Why couldn’t the person parking it had taken it a few steps to the buggy corral or, at the least, put it up on the grass so that no one would hit it?” Why do people do things like this? I believe it is because they are only thinking of themselves. They are in a hurry or don’t want to walk that far. Hopefully, it’s not that they just don’t care. The truth of the matter is that most people, if not doing similar things, are at least tempted to.

Philippians 2:3 says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves.” We are all born with a tendency to be selfish and put ourselves and our desires first. In this life, we have to choose to be different and start putting others above ourselves. This is the key. We must change our way of thinking — or rather, we must ask the Lord to help us to change. He changes us from the inside out. In order to do so, he must first be in our life, and the only way for him to be there is if we ask him to come in.

This past year, if we have lived selfish lives, we can do nothing about it. But a new year is ahead of us, and we can make changes. We can say with the Apostle Paul in Philippians 2:13-14, “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.”