Investigate my life, O God, find out everything about me; Cross-examine and test me, get a clear picture of what I’m about; See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—then guide me on the road to eternal life. – PSALM 139:23-24

Halloween is over. It was fun. We’re throwing out all our candy remnants tomorrow. Sorry kids. We’re looking at pictures and sharing stories. But, as we start the month of November, I feel like a sprinter in a starting block. I’m tense. My blood is coursing with adrenaline. I’m focused on steadying my breathing. Suddenly, I’m at odds with the world. It almost feels like people next to me are hoping to instigate a false start, enabling them to find some kind of unseen advantage in an unwelcome race in which we’re all expected to be psyching ourselves up.

I saw an ad today (from what is clearly a “race sponsor”) who mentioned that we ought to “Beat the holiday crowds for the pre-Black Friday sales.” Oh no. Has the race started? Did we not hear the starter’s pistol? With messages like this, a looming feeling of being somehow behind the proverbial pack starts sneaking up on all of us. What we discover during these months isn’t really all that surprising anymore: there’s only a limited amount of stuff out there and an army of people with endless appetite for acquiring it. So, we better start running. Right?

Let’s consider a shocking thought: this material race to better and greater stuff IS NOT a corrupting factor in us. You read that right. The constant bombardment of advertising and price-slashing deals that are “going fast” is NOT the issue. What if all of that nonsense is merely a litmus test for what’s already within us? How much anxiety we feel, how much money we’re willing to spend, how many people we’re willing to trample — all of that stuff — is already within us. Which means: WE might be the issue we’re trying to solve. Our culture is one blinded by an obsession with, as one scholar described it, “acquisitiveness.” Ask anyone and they’ll tell you: this isn’t the kind of life they intended to live, nor, the kind of person they ever intended to be.

People are looking for a different kind of life than the one that can be bought in a holiday rush. They want a life where they’re able to give ample time to the people they love. They want to live generously. They want to move from selfishness to selflessness. But, as a people, we don’t really know (or we often forget) how.  This Sunday, Doug Fields will start us off on a new series called, OBSESSED. It will be a great series to invite friends who are looking, like all of us, for how to make sense of a world gone crazy with it’s obsessions.

See you Sunday,
Jeff