[406 words]
The holidays are almost over. Everyone will soon be settling back into a rhythm that will take most people through the remainder of the winter and through the first part of spring. However, every day I check my “junk email” account, I see hundreds of email subject lines from hundreds of different companies such as this: “Christmas sale! You don’t want to miss this event.” “Treat yourself NOW!” “Don’t miss an EXTRA 40% off year end.” After months of Christmas sales and shopping and spending, my thought at seeing these is to ask, “really???”
Just once I’d like to see a company advertise and send me an email that says, “Andy, you have everything you need. Don’t buy anything else from us for a while” or “Andy, you spend enough during the holidays, please disregard this ad” or “Be content with what you have. Don’t open me.” Dare, I, to dream?
That message of being content and staying put and being happy with what you have will, in fact, not be found in many of the places we go in this world. Indeed, many God-fearing people will fear “missing out” on the next great thing more than they will dedicate themselves to being content with what they have. You know what the Bible calls that? In a word: idolatry. Yes, the same word that’s associated with bowing down and worshipping a statue or totem is the same word that the apostle Paul associates with a mind that is constantly scanning the ads for the “newer” and “better” or the “great sale” to come. Read Colossians 3:5 very carefully, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”
For Christians who wish to keep their minds on heavenly things, they (we) must be aware of the desire to find happiness and fulfillment in earthly things (see Colossians 3:1-2). There will always be another CLEARANCE SALE. There will always be another event that “You won’t wanna miss.” There will always be another place ready and all too willing to “save you money.” Yet, these places never will be, a substitute for the God who says, “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’” (Hebrews 13:5). What a promise. What a deal! Act now.
Andy Baker
Graeber Road church of Christ
Rosenberg, TX