Musings on When is Enough...Enough?

“Isn’t it like 30 degrees there?”my sister asked upon seeing this picture.  She lives in a place where 30 degrees is a heat wave.

“Yes...I am looking into electric heated jackets. Our director of Cities4Life showed up grinning like a Cheshire Cat and asked if he looked warm. Then he showed me amazing details on his new heated jacket. I didn’t even know there was such a thing!”

“Because you live in North Carolina,” she reminded me. 

Scoff if you must but standing out in the early mornings on the sidewalks of the abortion center for hours in winter is not easy on old people like me. So I called the heated jacket hotline. (Get it? Hot line. LOL)

“I had never heard of electric jackets,” I said, “And I have many questions. Like first, if it rains, will you get electrocuted.?”

Pause.

“Only if you are plugged into the wall at the time.”

I had other questions...several. He hung up on me after about an hour. He pretended he was having trouble with the connection but I am no dummy.

When the policeman came to check our sound permit as they do every day when we are using amplified sound on the sidewalk, he told me to “have a nice day and stay warm.” (He probably noticed my ‘nanook of the north’ get-up.)

“Speaking of that,” I said, noticing his not very thick jacket, “Have you ever considered a heated jacket?”

“No, I’d worry about getting electrocuted.”

I rest my case.

However, the lure of the heated jacket was too strong. I found one on sale with free returns and ordered it.  But now I have a new problem. I discovered there are also heated gloves and heated socks. There is even a heated scarf. To fully heat all exposed areas of my body would cost me the equivalent of a 30 foot yacht.

I realized that I had fallen into the trap that the world continually sets. You can never have ENOUGH STUFF. There will always be more STUFF that you want, even that you need. And everything conspires against your self-control. Within nanoseconds of me ordering the heated jacket, my Facebook news feed was filled with ads for heated jackets, and the next tantalizing lure: heated gloves. How did it know????

I have often wondered how King Solomon, commanded to have one wife by the God he loved, ended up with 700 wives and 300 concubines. That is 999 more female significant others than anyone needs, if you ask me. And he knew God...he knew God’s commands. How did he go so far off-track? And here is another irony. Solomon was supposed to be the wisest man who ever lived.

That collection of wives, many who did not worship God, led his heart astray. He erected ‘high places’ or altars for the detestable false gods, including Molech, whose followers practiced infant sacrifice by fire. Does this sound like wisdom to you? 

This wise man penned this verse:

Ecclesiastes 2: 26 To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

(I wonder if he wrote this while gathering and storing up 1,000 women....)

He knew that the collection of things was never going to satisfy. That gathering and storing up STUFF would not fulfill the longing for contentment that would last. I feel very sorry for Solomon and I think I understand him a little better as I lust after heated gloves, and heated socks, and heated scarves.

Whenever we seek satisfaction outside of God, it will disappoint. We cannot fulfill an eternal longing with a temporal object. Solomon said the eye was never satisfied with seeing, the ear never satisfied with hearing. 

So when is enough enough?

Our sufficiency is found only in God. Until we come to a place where we can honestly say God is enough, we will never have enough. 

2 Corinthians 3:5 

Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God,