When I was in elementary school one of my favorite things in the world was getting to go to summer camp.  I loved being out in the woods, going swimming in the lake, and inevitably falling in love with a girl by the end of the week.  
   I remember one incident at camp particularly well.  My best friend Bryan came to camp with me – it was the year the movie Batmancame out and we were both obsessed with it.  I got a package in the mail from my Mom (always the highlight of camp), which included sunscreen, cookies, and a couple of Batman toy figures inside.  I was really confused when I saw my Mom had sent me two of the same Batman figures.  Why wouldn’t she have gotten me Batman and the Joker?  Batman and anyone else would have worked, how did she miss the fact that she sent me two of the same toys?  
   At that point I remember thinking, “Surely this extra Batman isn’t for Bryan?  It was an accident and I’ll exchange it for something else when I get home.”  So for the whole week I enjoyed having my Batman figures on the windowsill by my bed, one that was opened and one that stayed untouched in the package.
   When Mom came to pick me up from camp at the end of the week the first thing I asked her was why she had sent me two of the same Batman figures.  And then the answer I already knew inside came, “I sent one for you and one for Bryan.  Didn’t you share it with him?”  Gulp.  No Mom, actually I kept it to myself and only let him hold the package for a minute before grabbing it out of his grubby little hands.  Oops.
   Sometimes it’s so easy for me to live life this way.  I hold on so tight to things I think are mine that I miss the point completely.  For a long time I didn’t understand tithing.  I knew God wanted me to give money back to Him but I had my hands clenched so tight around it that I couldn’t let it go.  How selfish.  Now every month when I send in our tithe I feel like I’m loosening my grip on what I say is mine.  Isn’t it all God’s anyway?  Who am I to say something is mine?  James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above.”  So doesn’t that mean every good thing in my life is a gift from God?  My wife, my stuff, even my life, it’s all God’s anyway. It’s strange but there’s a freedom that comes when I let go of what I thought was mine all along. 
   We spent this whole last week in Nashville writing the final songs for our new album.  It was an amazing week and we really wrote some incredible songs.  Our last thing to do in town was for the band to sit down with our record label and talk about which songs would and wouldn’t make the final cut of the album. This sounded harmless enough, until some songs I had written started getting knocked off the list.  All I kept thinking was, “I worked so hard on that one!”  Or, “Oh not that one, don’t you see how good that one could be?”  
   After the meeting I started feeling really selfish.  My songs.  Aren’t those songs God’s whether they ever end up on an album or not?  A friend told me once that we’re supposed to live life with an open hand.  It’s when we start gripping things too tightly that we miss the point and miss out on what God really has for us.  I think that’s true. So I’m trying to loosen the grip on my Batman figures one finger at a time. 

~Ryan Gregg