A Correct Focus Brings Contentment Series

Content, Only With Christ!

Every day you walk by hundreds, even thousands of people. They have different faces, names, genders, physical characteristics, religions and nationalities. Through all the differences that we have with everyone else, we all have one thing in common; every one of us carries baggage with us everywhere we go. It’s not physical or even visible baggage, but it’s all internal. For some of us we carry the bag of guilt for past wrongs, the bag of pride, the bag of worry, and the bag of loneliness. We all carry a different bag and we take these things with us everywhere we go. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a place to go to check our bags and not have to carry them with us anymore? Wouldn’t it be nice to finally lay down your pride so that you would stop wearing yourself out trying to be the best? Wouldn’t it be nice to finally lay down that guilt you have been carrying with you for the things you have done in your past? Wouldn’t it be a weight lifted off your shoulders to finally lay down that worry you carry with you everywhere? Wouldn’t it be nice? Well, I have good news! No I didn’t save any money on my car insurance by switching to Geico, but I have something better. I know where you can go to check your bags!

Come with me to a scene that thousands see everyday. Here there is lots of baggage. People are traveling. There is a lot of noise, loud speakers directing you where to go. And airplanes lifting off or landing taking passengers back and forth to different cities. We are in an airport. Most of you are familiar with the experience of an airport.

Pull into the parking lot with me as we get ready to be dropped off for our flight. On our way into the parking lot we begin looking around and noticing different things. For instance, a nice new Mercedes or BMW is just across from you. Over there in that other parking space is a nice Corvette and we think to ourselves, “Man, what I wouldn’t give for one of those.” We have all seen a car or truck sitting there in the parking lot and imagined ourselves driving it. We get to the door and we unload our bags. Now the scene changes, we go inside and we get in line at the airline we are flying so that they can give us our tickets. We are standing there with our 5 or 6 bags and we look around and notice the other people in line around us. We had to get up early this morning to catch our flight and so we didn’t have our nicest outfits on. We notice a man or woman up ahead of us who has obviously taken the time to put on their name brand clothes and we think to ourselves, “Man, it would be nice to have those clothes.” Then we look down and notice that one of our bags has a hole in it. “Great”, we think to ourselves. Then something else catches our eye, the business man up there has some top of the line luggage. We look closely at his luggage to catch the name on the tag and the name says, “Hartmann.” Hartmann is one of the most elegant and most expensive lines of luggage available. And we think to ourselves, “Boy, it sure would be nice to have some luggage that didn’t have holes in it.” Then we wonder what type of bag we have so we look down to see the name and it says, “Discontent.”

I was in St. Louis last weekend with my family for the 4th of July. On Monday morning we couldn’t really decide what to do and no one had any opinions. So some of the ladies decided for us that we would go shopping. Now when I think about shopping I think about Target, Wal-Mart, Champs Sports, stores like that. Apparently, that’s not what they had in mind. We landed at the Galleria in St. Louis. This is a mall for people who have money to burn. We walked in and I looked at Grant and said, “Grant, don’t get your fingerprints on anything. We can’t afford to buy it.” We looked around and everything was so beautiful yet so far out of my range and social class. The guys and gals split up to go look around. As the guys and I looked around we found ourselves in the Bose store. We were looking at all the flat screen TV’s and wondering what they would look like in our living rooms or dorm rooms. Then I was invited back to their theater to check out this new sound system they had. So I headed back with a couple other guys and sat down in this theater type room, staring at this big screen and watched their presentation. They showed me how my life wasn’t complete without this sound equipment because I was missing so much in my “normal” sound equipment at home. They showed me how my big, bulky speakers couldn’t do near the work that their special Bose speakers could do. So, I watched this presentation and I’ve got to admit, I was impressed. I was thinking to myself, “Man, this would look really good in a family room downstairs.” I was just eating it up. The sound was great, it was a big TV. What more could a guy want? When the presentation was over the guy told us a few other things about the product and said, “This could be yours today. Which color do you want?” I had to just laugh at him. The speaker system by itself was over $1,500. That didn’t include the nearly $10,000 TV and the projector that we watched the presentation on. Even in our entertainment, if we don’t have the latest, biggest or best, we’re missing out. So I went home without and watched NFL Network on my 27” Sanyo, non-flat screen, non-high definition, bulky TV. It wasn’t quite the same experience.