You are holding a small miracle right now. A slab of glass that carries the sum of human knowledge, answers almost any question you ask it, and lets you talk to someone across the planet like they're standing in your kitchen. And if you're anything like me, you've complained about it at least once this week. The wifi was slow. The battery died. The video buffered for four whole seconds.
Everything is amazing. And almost nobody is happy.
That's not a new observation — a comedian said it on a late-night show twenty years ago, back before half the miracles we carry in our pockets even existed. But it's only gotten truer. We are the most comfortable, most entertained, most abundant people who have ever lived. And anxiety is up. Loneliness is up. Something in us still hums with a quiet "it's not enough." So here's the honest question, the one most of us are afraid to ask out loud: how can everything around you be a miracle and something inside you still feel this empty?
Paul answered that question two thousand years ago, writing to people living in Rome — the richest, most entertained, most powerful city on the planet at the time. Sound familiar? He put his finger on the root of it in a single line: we "worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator."
Here's the deal. Worship isn't just singing. Worship is where you send your time, your attention, your affection, your dependence. It's what you reach for when you're tired and empty at eleven o'clock at night. And the trouble is almost never that we're chasing bad things. It's that we take good things — really good things — and quietly ask them to carry the weight that only God was ever meant to carry.
I heard a preacher say it like this: we turn good things into God things, and that's always a bad thing.
Look at what we actually build our lives on. Love. Family. Your kids. Work. Success. A glass of wine to unwind. The box on the porch. The gym. The next raise, the next level, the next little hit of being wanted. None of those are evil. Every one of them is a gift. But a gift was never designed to sit in the seat that belongs to the Giver. Some of you already know which one I'm talking about. The thing you go to first. The thing that used to bring joy and now just barely keeps the ache quiet. That's the ditch. And it's the most crowded ditch on earth.
Now here's where you expect the pastor to tell you to burn your stuff, move to a commune, and stop wanting things. Want less. Try harder. Big killjoy energy.
But that's not what Paul says, and it's not what Jesus says. The problem was never the gifts. The problem is a gift that never sends you back to the One who gave it. Augustine prayed it honestly: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."
So the way out of the ditch isn't less. It's gratitude.
I'm telling you, this is the thing I'm actually learning to practice. Not ignoring the good things — enjoying them, and letting the enjoyment carry my heart back up to God. My son got a 3D printer and I caught myself thanking God instead of just watching him mess with it. My daughter sat on the porch with one of our dogs and I said thank you. My fifteen-year-old got his driver's permit and I felt the gift and the Giver at the same time. My wife, who I somehow get to do this life with. When my gratitude goes back to God, the same life that felt like it wasn't enough is suddenly full. Everything's amazing — and all of a sudden, I'm happy too. Both things get to be true.
That's the narrow road. Enjoy the gift. Thank the Giver. Every single day.
But there's one more step, because gratitude by itself can't undo what's already been aimed at the wrong thing. The good news of Jesus is that you don't have to claw your own way out of this ditch by trying harder. Jesus went to the cross so that our worship of created things — the ignoring, the settling, the low-grade idolatry every one of us is guilty of — could actually be forgiven. The way out has a name, and it's repentance. You turn around. You bring the ache to Jesus instead of to the next thing on the shelf. And He meets you there every time.
So this week, try the smallest version of it. When something good shows up — coffee, your kid's laugh, a paycheck, a sunset out the windshield — don't just consume it. Say thank you, and mean it, to the God who gave it. See what a week of that does to your heart.
We'd love to have you join us on Sunday.
