Better is One Day...

Psalm 84 says:

1 How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD Almighty! 2 My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God... 10 Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.

There was plenty of yearning over the weekend, as so-called Black Friday yielded a reported 7% increase over last year's sales, and today, which is Cyber Monday, promises a glorified rush of holiday shopping.   Black Friday, unfortunately, was not without its incidents, such as the lady who unloaded pepper spray upon her fellow shoppers, just to get a competitive advantage for an XBox - 20 people injured there.   A few fights in retail stores were reported across the country, and the psychological experts were paraded through the media, saying that perhaps the combination of the dismal economy and the desire to win produced some aggressive behavior.


Well, Biblically speaking, we can see exactly what was going on late Thursday night and after midnight on Friday.   James 4 nails it:
1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

While I enjoy spending the Friday after Thanksgiving visiting the stores early and kicking off the Christmas season, as we did this year, the promotions and circumstances presented somewhat of a perfect storm - and the root of bad behavior is selfishness - wanting what we don't have and failing to trust God as our provider.   In this season where we allegedly celebrate what God has given to us through Christ, we would be wise to develop a passion for giving to others and drawing closer to God during this Advent season.

Bottom line:  we'll do what we want to do, and be slow to do what we don't want to do.   So, the question becomes, what do we want?   In Mark 10, Jesus asked a blind man,  

51 "What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asked him. The blind man said, "Rabbi, I want to see." 52 "Go," said Jesus, "your faith has healed you." Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.  


May God grant us the ability to see what He wants to do in us, and to develop a passion for our desires to line up with His.