I shared with you last week that our daughter in North Carolina
was recently hospitalized and my husband Dan went to be with her. I was unable to go so I figured if I couldn’t
be there in person, I would at least do what I could to give them something, or
someone in my case, to laugh at.
According to them, I succeeded. I
don’t profess to be the sharpest tack in the box, and what I did when Dan was
gone proved that to be true.
He left for North Carolina on Saturday, so that meant that I had
to go to church without him on Sunday. I
went to our worship service, then to our Sunday School class and then decided
to run some errands in Fort Wayne, which is a city about 30 miles away from
us. While I was driving, I was trying to
decide where I would eat lunch and suddenly I had a certain restaurant come to
mind and I immediately knew that’s where I wanted to go.
I decided I would run a couple of my errands first and then stop
to eat, figuring that would get me to the restaurant before noon so hopefully
they wouldn’t be too busy. My mouth
watered as I thought about where I was going to eat. I knew just what I was going to order and I
could hardly wait to get my tasks done so I could enjoy my lunch. I finally headed towards the restaurant and
as I glanced towards their parking lot I had the thought, oh good they aren’t very busy.
But as I got closer to the establishment, my next thought was, they aren’t busy at all! Then the light bulb went on in my head. The reason they weren’t busy was because it
was Chick-fil-A, and they aren’t open on Sundays.
My first mistake was thinking they would be open, my second
mistake was telling Dan and Erica. They sure
got a good laugh over my blunder and it has been brought back up to me more
than once since then. Erica did have a
profound statement about it though. She
said, “That’s just the way it is.
Chick-fil-A always sounds the best on Sundays.”
Isn’t that true? So many
times in our life, what sounds the best is what we can’t have. Not just Chick-fil-A, but so often, what we
are tempted to do in life, are the things that we can’t do, or aren’t supposed
to be doing. It is those forbidden
things that often lure us in and make us want them all the more.
We see that as far back as Adam and Eve. They had been told that they could eat from
any tree in the garden, except for one.
So from which one did they choose to eat? The only one that was off limits. The temptation was just too great and even
though they had been given so much, they still wanted what they couldn’t have.
Satan loves to just keep dangling things in front of us that
will tempt us to make the wrong choices.
He thrives on always making the grass look greener in places where we
shouldn’t go. Instead of being satisfied
with what we have been given, Satan wants to make sure that we always want
more.
In addition, the world is constantly telling us that to be happy
we need to own this or that, climb up the corporate ladder a little faster, or
live in a larger, fancier home. It’s
hard to say no; hard to be content and happy, especially when we may see those
around us seemingly so much happier because they have accumulated more than us.
Is it a sin to have a lot of possessions? No. Is
it a sin to live in a beautiful home?
No. Is it a sin to climb higher
on the corporate ladder? No. None of these things are wrong, unless they
are your all-consuming goal. Paul wrote
in Philippians 4:12-13, “I know how to live on almost nothing or
with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation,
whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I
can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.” The key is to be content, to find your
day-to-day joy in Christ, not in those earthly things that the world may put in
your path. As long as He is your main
desire, all other things will pale in comparison.
I finally got to eat at Chick-fil-A this past Saturday and do
you know what I found out? It tasted
just as good on a Saturday, than it would have on that Sunday. Sure, I had to wait a couple weeks to fulfill
my hunger for their food but it was worth it.
And the same is usually true in our life desires. What we think we need today, may be something
that God feels we need to wait awhile to obtain or something that He feels we
should not have at all. The key is
learning to be content with what we have today and not consumed with what we
think we will need tomorrow.
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