“Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?” - Isaiah 55:2

What do you want for Christmas? Ask for more!

I don’t usually encourage people to lengthen their Christmas lists. “Christmas has become so consumeristic,” I have often said. “Do we really need to ask for so much stuff?”

I’ve often encouraged people to be satisfied with less.
This year I’m telling people to ask for more.

I have come to believe that the problem is not that we are never satisfied, but that we are far too easily satisfied. We have allowed ourselves to seek satisfaction from that which can never satisfy. Instead of learning to be satisfied with stuff, become dissatisfied with all stuff, and seek satisfaction in the life of God.

I once read a newspaper article about a woman in a white Jaguar who ran over a man standing in the mall parking space she wanted. Discovering his leg was broken, she told him to get over it as she hurried into the mall to do her Christmas shopping. This story reminds me of the danger of seeking satisfaction from stuff at the mall. We can do some crazy things when we expect satisfaction from that which cannot satisfy.

“Why spend your labor on what does not satisfy?” asks Isaiah. Don’t seek satisfaction from that which can never ultimately give it. Rather, we are invited to join in the cry of Isaiah 64:1, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!” Isaiah calls us to be satisfied with nothing less than the real and active presence of God.

What do you want for Christmas?
Let’s not be satisfied with trinkets and tokens.
Ask for nothing less than God breaking into our world, doing what only God can do.