My annual Black Friday tweet says this- “Black Friday is proof that Thanksgiving did not take.” I’m not trying to shame anyone on the lookout for bargains. Neither am I a Scrooge about nice things. I’m in favor of them, and have far more than I am due. None of which undoes the point. We stop one day a year to feast and give thanks. The next day we’re up before the crack of dawn to beat our neighbors in the race for the best baubles. One day we’re politely passing the stuffing around the table, the next we’re playing tug-of-war with the last Tickle Me Elmo at Walmart.
We are like this because we expect too much from our stuff. Gifts are designed by God to be reminders of Him, signposts toward heaven, whispers of His love for us. Because of our sin we use gifts to forget about Him, to seek contentment on earth and to drown out His affirmation of His love. Our idols have mouths, but they do not speak. And we are just like them.
Seeking contentment, affirmation, joy in stuff is as foolish as bowing down before an idol we have carved ourselves, or put on lay-away. We are thirsty. We stand on the shore of an abundance of water. We dive in, drink deep, gulping it down by the gallon. And find ourselves only more thirsty in an ocean of water. We drink still more, fanning the flame of the raging fire that is our thirst. Every false solution to the real problem of our thirst will only make it worse. Soon we become bitter at the very God we sought a substitute for.
He, because He loves us, seeks and finds us. He changes our hearts, giving us a taste for the still waters. We begin to hear His whispers, to behold His glory, to embrace the joy He gives us. Until, like Gomer before us, we return to our former lovers. Folly still misleads us. We still look for love in all the wrong places, and in all the wrong things. So like Hosea, He tracks us down once again, having loved us the whole time, and washes us again.
Saint Augustine, in his Confessions, described our condition this way, “O Lord, our hearts are restless, until they find their rest in Thee.” On Thanksgiving we remember to rest in Him. The very function of the holiday is to acknowledge and give thanks to Him for His faithfulness. We feast, because He is the Lord of the Feast. We are the children like olive plants round about the table of our heavenly Father (Psalm 128). We are not insatiable, unable to be satisfied. Instead we are unable to find satisfaction in that which does not satisfy. In Him, at His right hand, is fullness of joy forevermore (Psalm 16:11). He is our exceedingly great reward, now and always. Lord, wash me that I would never seek what cannot be found anywhere, save in Your loving arms.