Sale!
“50%off” That was two days ago. Now it’s Christmas morning. The “magic” of Christmas was going cheap before the day had come … and gone. Could it be that those ads and commercials touting the latest, the best, the brightest to make our lives better, easier, more satisfied could have the cherished objects deeply discounted even up to 75% off before the day has even come?
You can fool some of the people all the time. You can fool all of the people some of the time. So which one are we? Why is it so hard to see through the empty promises which fill the air waves, internet and print leading up to the ‘magic’ day of Christmas?
Perhaps it is because they are telling us what we want to hear. We want to believe that if we had enough money or the right pill, or even Mr./Mrs. Right, life would live up to our dreams. Anything or anyone who plies our imagination with enough ‘magic’ surely gets our attention.
But, as you read this the ‘magic’ day has come and gone and the New Year beckons or has arrived. By now the wrapping paper is in the trash, perhaps the tree and tinsel are taken down, and we are still the same. We are pestered with the same aches, pains, disappointments and heartbreaks that all that ‘magic’ was supposed to fix.
God alone can fix us. Albert Einstein famously said that the definition of insanity was to continue the same behavior with expectation of a different outcome. Surely now, as we contemplate 2014 with bulging bathroom scales, empty pocketbooks, and the excitement of Christmas 2013 now all but forgotten, we are ready for a new approach to life.
January 6 heralds the visit of the Wise Men to the manger. Will it find us wiser and seeking the Savior and His Solution to the unfulfilled life?
Parables and Prayers for Today 