For some of us life is going really well. We get good grades. Football is great. We are the stars on the dance team. We get to play halo when we want. Our popularity is increasing, and our family is running smoothly. Others of us are at the opposite end of the happiness spectrum. Grades are crashing. We just got cut from the team. We don’t have an iPod. Our family is dysfunctional, and we are outcasts at school. Then there is a third group that lives somewhere in between that has some great things going on in life and some not so great.
If you are the person living in a really happy place right now what is the one thing that would change everything? Maybe it would be receiving an “F” on your report card, or taking your cell phone away. How about those of you in the bad place? Maybe it’s an “A” on your next algebra test, or a new x-box 360. Maybe it’s becoming popular. If you just had that one thing go right in your life it would make everything right.
What if you could remain consistent no matter what happened? What if you had something deep within you that was ultimately okay with whatever? I’m not saying you wouldn’t care if something bad happened to you, but when something did go wrong it would not crush your world. People are like human roller coasters; they go up and down. A boy, a girl, a grade a position…It is amazing how 1 thing can hold so much power over us. Why do these things affect us so much? It is because we are attached. It’s why some of you will I.M for 4 straight hours, or text 20 times in 1 hour. It’s why some of you are so aware of how you look that you constantly stare at yourself in the mirror.
What if we stopped clinging to accomplishments, people and stuff and we attached ourselves to something more stable? We would have highs and lows but would not be destroyed if we didn’t make the team. When we place our happiness in these things we lose big time. Everything has an expiration date. An “A” will last until the next test. The new video game will eventually be boring. Sports don’t last. Where is Micheal Jordan now?
The things we attach ourselves to in order to bring us happiness the Bible calls idols—things that always fall short! Isaiah 44:10, 15-20 talks about a man that uses a block of wood to build a fire and cook his food. After he is finished making his food he uses the rest to carve out an idol and then worships it. Isaiah asks the question, “Does this man realize that he is worshiping what he cooked his food with? Will he ever ask himself, ‘Is this idol, this thing that I am worshiping, a lie?’”
This guy is obviously way to attached to this block of wood. It would be like us making a Playdough figure and then bowing down to it and worshiping it. Or putting on make up and worshiping what you see in the mirror. Or being so proud of your grades that you feel above everyone else Don’t we all do the same thing as this guy making an idol. It seems like what he is doing is complete nonsense and we would never even think about doing such a thing. The reason it seems like this is because we he did is not a part of our culture. But the truth is we do the same thing.
We live in a world where everyone tries to attach themselves to their circumstances; we are up and down. Can we get off this roller coaster? God says, “I am contentment.” He says, “OUIT LOOKING AT THE BLOCK OF WOOD, THE GREADE, THE BOY, THE GIRL, THE IPOD, YOURSELF…” What are you attached to? Ask yourself, “Is this thing that I believe that can make me happy a lie?”Attaching is when your emotions and happiness are defined by something other than God. The emptiness inside you only God can fill.
