My daughter wanted a picture. That one of when she was in kindergarten and I’m wearing a white turtleneck with an old, hole riddled, green sweater. I couldn’t find it. But I found an old photo album of me from December before I was born to June, the month she was killed.

The album is floral and spiral and had the pages that stuck the pictures to it. My mom had a beehive hairdo. My dad looked cool, according to my middle son. He wore a mustard short sleeve shirt cradling me cautiously in his arms.

Mom filled in words by the pictures. Of when they brought me home and introduced me to Beauregard. When I met my grandparents. When I met aunts and uncles. My first bath. How I looked “smart” at four days old.

The words stop where her picture is. She’s sitting on the bed with me lying beside her. My mom’s baby sister was only 17.

The book ends. I was six months old. She was killed by a drunk driver.

This selfish act by one man destroyed several families. He lost wife, kids, and job. But he kept his life. My family lost a sister, a daughter, and aunt. And years of memory making.

We are all selfish. We all believe, or rather convince ourselves, that our selfishness only benefits. So, we lie to the mirror and hurt friends, family, and foe around us. If we’re utterly honest, in a moment we don’t care.

We are all selfish beings.

And years later, a photo album is still missing words. At 18 years old, I learned of my mom’s sister. She had tears as she handed me her class ring. And I had a ton of questions.

We stunt healing, steal hope, and shred happiness through selfishness. Selfishness is antithetical to love. If the world, or a family, is going to experience any healing or hope or happiness, it needs love and selflessness.

And this happens, God so loved that He gave. Selfishness had no space to grow nor time to develop. And some crazy man reminded believers in Phillipi to do nothing out of selfish ambition. Do nothing in selfishness.

Nothing. Like the entry in my photo album.

Because to act in selfishness creates nothing. To act in selflessness creates abundance.

Words fail and we sit in silence when hurts are large and love is small. What a world would we live in if we did nothing in selfishness and did everything in love? If we intentionally created abundance through selflessness?

What kind of world would we create if we put down drink and drugs and anger?

If we would deny impulses to greed and gather so we could give generously in gratitude?

The drunk who killed my aunt probably believed his drinking was a help for stress or trauma. Perhaps he just like the feeling of a little liquid courage. Because, what harm is a little selfishness? Then the accident revealed the void he created and the lies he believed. And the harm reached beyond that time, that space.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Phillipians 2: 3-8

Jesus emptied Himself. Jesus became a servant. Jesus humbled Himself. Jesus was obedient. And He died for His selflessness, for His love. A tomb became nothing for all its selfishness. And believers came to live abundantly.

I never learned the drunk’s name. I have no idea if he ever put down drink and took up Grace. I hope he did.

Honestly, looking through my photographs, I had no idea where a simple laugh at a beehive hair would lead. But the absence of words is sometimes the loudest declaration to be heard.

So, listen, my friend, to the nothing selfishness gives and hear, sweet friends, the abundance selflessness shares.