A few years back, I took on the arduous task of transferring our family VHS tapes over to DVD. It was not fun. It took hours, but probably even longer than it should’ve because each VHS tape I put in to transfer pulled me in. I found myself glued to the screen. A lot of the videos were just mundane stuff, but one in particular really caught my attention.
It was Christmas and the video was focused on my four-year old son opening up his pile of presents. Every time he opened one up, he would say the same thing. “I always wanted this!” And then he would toss it aside, open another gift and say the very same thing.
In the foreground, the camera captures my oldest son tearing through his gifts. In the background, my 18-month-old daughter is absorbed with just one gift, a dollhouse. With her little bare feet, she can be seen trying to climb the dollhouse stairs and insert herself into the miniature world.
Watching these two different responses to gifts, both innocent and sincere, revealed a world of wisdom to me. Young as he may have been, my son seemed to be a representation of mankind. Barely five years old, and never satisfied, always looking for something else, when in truth just one toy had the potential to entertain and absorb him for hours, like the dollhouse did for my daughter.
Are we ever really satisfied? We're always looking for something else when in truth, we really need very little to get by. But our eyes get green with envy, and we want whatever it is so bad, yet when we get it, it’s unfulfilling.
I had to have the best, the fastest cars, the most beautiful cars! I love that stuff. But at the end of the day nothing ever satisfied me until that day in May of 1995, when at RFK Stadium for a Promise Keepers convention, I accepted Jesus, and he filled the void that all those other things could not fill. So, I'd like to challenge you today to think about all the “toys” we’ve “always wanted”. Are we getting things, acquiring statuses, promotions, vacations and enjoying the heck out of them like my daughter with her dollhouse, or are we tossing what we get aside soon after acquisition for something else, the thing we really want?
There’s nothing wrong with things. There’s nothing wrong with promotions, vacations if you’re able to take them or a nice car. But look at your things and desires in context. What sacrifices have to be made? What’s the motive? Do you really want that? Do you even understand what it is? And this is something I know my two young children didn’t understand yet, but is the thing you want only self-serving, or will you use what you get for his glory?
He said he'll supply everything we need, not necessarily everything we want. I'm hoping that when you do get your heart's desire, if you do get it, that you’ll treasure it, enjoy it and use it for his glory. The bottom line is, when you do get it, what do you do with it?
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