How is it that we can live lives of such abundance and yet be so unhappy? I was reading last night that in 1900 Americans wanted 74 things and considered 18 of them essential, a recent survey shows that here in the West we want 500 things, and consider 100 of them essential.
I feel uneasy when I look around our house and consider all that we have, partly because of a tendency to live beyond our means, now we do not earn a huge salary, and we are adjusting to a new lifestyle...Tim was an Electronics designer for many years....now we job share as Lay Workers and Evangelists.
I am not suggesting that we should live joylessly, nor do I consider that God has not given us many good things to enjoy...what I am trying to escape from is a certain drivenness to acquire stuff . Supermarket bargains are a case in point...BOGOF offers for example...I buy these whenever I can, but when the Free cans of Tuna start filling the cupboard space and we have way too much cereal, this is madness...especially when the bank balance is becoming perilously low.
Contentment is something that the advertisers assure us we will achieve when we simply buy their product life will be complete, but there is aways another product, and always another advert...
So why are we at such dis-ease with ourselves? The fig leaves of the garden have transformed themselves into cars and computers, fashion clothing and shopping lists, and we hide from God in the midst of our possessions, avoiding his call his touch and his challenge...
We can hide too behind our Bible collection, our notebooks and agendas...busy busy with working for God and not spending time with Him, this too produces dis-ease if we stop long enough to recognise it.
My work includes being a kind of Pastor to a group of young mums who meet in our church each week, they are mostly on low incomes,but their list of wants is endless, the stretch themselves and their bank balances past breaking point...take out meals (expensive here) are purchased, for several of the obesity is a real problem yet they plough on relentlessly. I listen to their stories and it breaks my heart... they are hiding from themselves and ultimately from God. Dis-ease is a part of their life experience.
Alan Mann in "Atonement for a Sinless Society" suggests that where sin is mis understood and therefore not experienced, there is a huge element of shame in peoples lives today. (I know this is essentially a question of semantics, but when sin is portrayed as an enjoyable indulgence we need to be careful what we say.) People are aware of a real brokenness within. Many acknowledge this and the quest for wholeness and completeness is on...and the advertising trap beckons many....Others seek spiritual wholeness through the whole range of spirituality's on offer through the New Age movement and its fringes.
Jesus speaks powerfully into the whole issue...
Matthew 6:28-33 (MsgB)
All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, [29] but have you ever seen colour and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.
[30] "If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? [31] What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. [32] People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. [33] Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.
And so often I forget that God is interested in my everyday concerns, but not necessarily with my wants and certainly not with my drivenness to acquire...
The challenge is to step out from behind the stuff, and to stand before God just as we are, empty and broken for;
"Earth is crammed with heaven
and every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees
takes off his shoes"- Elizabeth Barret Browning
