Christmas Lists and Spiritual Emptiness

With Christmas just a few months away, those of us who have kids and grandkids will start receiving lists of what those kids and grandkids say they want to find under the tree. The pervasive and convincing presence of marketing lures us all, young and old alike, into thinking that if I would just have this or just have that, the vacuum cleaner of desire that lives in me will shut down and I will somehow have been made complete. Of course, most of us who are older realize the exact opposite: that the more stuff we have, the more stuff we want. Our kids need to learn that things never fill the hole in our souls that can only be filled by the presence of God in our lives. Sure, the prosperity and pleasure that makes our earthly lives easier might feel good, but they never bring us closer to God. Abraham Kuyper once wrote about the dangers that come with having too much stuff. “Comfort and ease weaken character, drain away our dependence on God, and fill us with the idolatry of self-reliance.”