ON TODAY'S SITE:

John Ortberg, Murray Bodo, Book of Matthew, Georg Friedrich Hegel

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Photo by Lisa Bowman        All rights reserved

         

When we take our children to the shrine of the Golden Arches,
they always lust for the meal that comes with a cheap little prize,
a combination christened, in a moment of marketing genius,  the
the Happy Meal. You're not just buying fries, McNuggets, and a
dinosaur stamp; you're buying happiness. Their advertisements
have convinced my children they have a little McDonald's-
shaped vacuum in their souls: "Our hearts are restless till
they find their rest in a happy meal."


...The problem with the Happy Meal is that the happy wears off,
and they need a new fix. No child discovers lasting happiness in just
one: "Remember that Happy Meal? What great joy I found there!"

Happy Meals brings happiness only to McDonald's. You ever
wonder why Ronald McDonald wears that grin? Twenty
billion Happy Meals, that's why.

When you get older, you don't get any smarter;
your happy meals just get more expensive.


From "Toils and Snares: Resisting
the Hidden Temptations of Ministry,"
by John Ortberg
Multnomah, 1994


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The trouble with selfishness and greed is that it slips
so easily from material things to things of the spirit
like reputation, or honor, or appreciation and fame.
And this need to hold onto adulation slips sooner of
later into a kind of slavery to other people's opinions
of us. This whole process turns us increasingly inward;
and ironically, it makes us insecure and fearful. So that
what began as an ego-building enterprise, like building
the tower of Babel, ends in confusion of tongue and
heart that makes us afraid to say what we mean
or to mean what we say.


Excerpted from "song of the sparrow,"
by Murray Bodo, O.F.M.
St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1989




Photo by Lisa Bowman  All rights reserved


Don't store up treasures here on earth,
where moths eat them and rust destroys
them, and where thieves break in and steal.
Store your treasures in heaven where moths
and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not
break in and steal. Where your treasure is,
there the desires of your heart will also be.


Matthew 6:19
The Holy Bible
New Living Translation


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The real point of materialism is not how much we have,
but what has us. It's not what we hold, but how tightly
we hold it. Not what we have, but how we got it. The
test of materialism is whether our goods have made us
proud or grateful, self-sufficient or God-sufficient.


From "Preaching for Change,"
Edited by Keith White and Scott Gibson
Baker, 1990