A New Beginning: Life’s “Reset”
Psalm 5:1-12
With smartphones becoming commonplace, many terms from the digital world have been adopted into our daily lives. Among them, several terms have taken on special meaning and become relevant to our everyday experiences.
One such term is “reset,” which refers to returning to the computer’s initial screen and rebooting. It means “starting over.” When applied to our lives, a reset can signify starting a new chapter in life.
There’s a book titled “What Death Told Life,” written by Professor Kim Bum-seok, an oncologist at Seoul National University Cancer Hospital. It discusses “life resets” from the perspective of cancer patients’ lives and deaths. One day, he took a taxi to the Lotte Hotel.
The taxi driver looked in the rearview mirror and said, “Oh! Aren’t you Professor Kim Bum-seok?” He recognized the driver as a former patient. Five years earlier, the driver had been the caregiver for a patient with stage 4 lung cancer, and a year later, he himself became a patient, seeking treatment at the hospital.
He had undergone surgery for stomach and thymic cancer, but it recurred, requiring further surgery and chemotherapy. Fortunately, he was cured. During the traffic jam, he spoke non-stop about how he had changed since that time when he thought he was going to die.
First, he said his friendships changed. When he got cancer, some friends worried and brought him food, and others gave him money to help with hospital bills. But some suddenly stopped contacting him, and there was even one “guy” who, somehow knowing he had a small cancer insurance policy, asked to borrow the money.
Second, his attachment to his children lessened. Ultimately, he realized that the only person who would stand by him until the end was his wife. He said that by not relying on his children and treating them with an attitude of “it’s good if they come, but it’s okay if they don’t,” his children actually treated him more comfortably.
Thirdly, he said he stopped clinging to life and became grateful for everything. Since he considered himself already dead, like a ghost wandering around, his life completely changed. Even when a car cut him off, unlike before, he would just say, “Go ahead!” and let them pass. He even got rid of ancestral rites. He said that living people are more important than the dead, so he doesn’t burden his children and instead takes family trips during holidays. As a result, his children come to visit him more often during the holidays.
“I was already a dead man four years ago. Thanks to the wonderful doctors I met back then, I had surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy, and I’m doing so well now, I’m just grateful. If it weren’t for the doctors, I would have already had three memorial services held for me.”
“My life completely changed after I got cancer. Thank you, doctor. Thanks to your excellent cancer treatment, my life has completely changed. Thank you so much. My son told me that it’s like my life has been reset. Haha.”
Professor Kim Bum-seok shares his thoughts on this in his book: “A life reset… After saying goodbye to him and getting out of the taxi, I thought as I walked, ‘Just as electronic devices have a reset button, I wish our lives sometimes had a reset button too…’”
“If, when life becomes utterly unbearable, we could press this button and go back to a certain point in our lives, if we could start over, I think we could live very well…”
The “morning” that David experienced was a time of first presenting his situation to God and resetting his life. David woke up in the morning and first poured out his heart to God, expressing his pain. He understood sorrow.
Therefore, he first poured out his feelings. “Listen to my words, O Lord, and consider my lament. Hear my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray.” (Psalm 5:1-2) He always took time first to express the depth of his pain.
He knew that a life reset could never happen unless his burdened heart was first emptied. To him, God was not an ‘abstract absolute being.’ He was someone to whom he could pour out his worries and pain.
He treated God like a person, confiding in Him as if He were his best friend. God was pleased with this. That is why God called David “a man after my own heart.”
David pleads with God to listen to his words and to understand his thoughts. He is praying, presenting to God the crisis situation caused by his son Absalom’s rebellion.
He honestly and openly reveals his bleak situation. He entrusts it to God, acknowledging that he cannot resolve it on his own. A reset truly happens when we confess and entrust everything to God. That is what morning prayer is about.
A life of dying to our own will and following God’s will begins with pouring out our pain and sorrow before the Lord. That is the reset where “weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).
In today’s passage, David is speaking to us about a life reset. Morning time is a time to reset our lives. It is a time to pour out our circumstances, accept God’s will, and rise again.
For today’s life to be a bonus, we must consider that we could have died yesterday. Then each day becomes a newly given, additional life. Then we cannot help but be grateful. It is no longer a life lived for ourselves, but a life sent to love with the heart of the Lord. The morning is the time when this miraculous reset should happen every day. Those who come before God in prayer during the first hours of dawn are those who understand that today is a day given to them by God.
Completely rely on and trust in God, who helps in the morning (Psalm 46:5). Jesus also reset his day by pouring out all his heart to his Father. This is why morning prayer appears so frequently in the Gospels.
Heavenly Father,
Allow me to reset my life this morning.
Let me lay all my burdens before You,
and begin anew without any lingering resentment.
I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
