A Bird In The Hand

Yet with all my wealth of toys… do you think it was enough? No… it was never enough. This… proved doubly so right around Thanksgiving time. It was always about this time of year… that the Sears Christmas catalog would come out.

Way... way back in the day… (I’m talking WAY back in the 80s) living in a small town… my brother, my sister, and I… would do our Christmas shopping out of the Sears catalog. We would flip through the toy section… eyes… THIS wide… cutting out every little thing... that our little hearts desired. And there were enough toys on our wish lists… to bankrupt my poor parents.

And for that entire month, every night I would go to sleep with the visions of all those brand new toys running through my head. I had great anticipation… a great hope… that Christmas morning would bring a pile of toys that was as tall as I was. And then Christmas morning came… and there wasn’t a HUGE pile… it was simply… a BIG pile. OK… I thought… it is quality not quantity right!!!! Then the first present… SOCKS. OK… there are still about 15 presents for them to get it right. The next present… a sweater. Another present… a book! On and on… until all my presents were unwrapped… and I would only have 4 or 5 brand new toys. *SNIFF* *SNIFF*

What a messed up perspective. But admit it… how often do we do that even now. We have this great big dreams… and they cloud all the wonderful gifts we have… not only that… they cloud all the wonderful gifts we receive. Metaphorically speaking… we get a BIG pile of presents… and the first thing we tend to think… is “Why isn’t the pile HUGE”

But this is exactly what David is trying to teach us about. You see… we are a sinful people… we all have sinful desires… we have a corrupt outlook on life… and David pulls all of that back in… and then points to God. And says, look… you have all that you need… really… you have more than you need. Not only that… but you have a good amount of things that go beyond your needs… you have a ton of things you want… go beyond that… you have things that you DON’T even want… DON’T even use. All the while… we want more… and more… and more.

Brothers and sisters, lets pull it in really quickly to that great “SO WHAT?” This Thanksgiving… there will be time to make complete gluttons of ourselves, time to gorge on food, gorge on football, gorge on family, even gorge on commercialism. At the same time I would like to encourage you to remember the reason that we even have the opportunity to gorge on these things. It is because of a God who gives and gives in great abundance.

As Christians, let us remember to stop and give thanks to God for all he has done. Give thanks to God… for he is good… his love and his faithfulness endures forever…

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.