Affordable comforts?

Yesterday while I was shopping, I noticed that the price of the lunchmeat I buy had changed again.  It has bounced around quite a bit over the last few months.  Last year I could purchase a package for $2.50 and then a few months ago the price jumped up to $3.20 and since then I have watched as the price has slowly come back down.  Today it was priced at $2.89.  I was pretty happy when I first saw the new and lower price, but as I continued shopping and pushing my overflowing cart past other carts that had 2, 5 or maybe 10 items I started thinking a little more about the drop in the price of the lunchmeat.

I started wondering about my fellow shoppers who have had to pass up the purchase of this lunchmeat for the last few months because of the high price.  These are the people who have had to go without in order to bring back the lower price.  I am sure that they go without more than just lunchmeat, and their sacrifices make my comforts affordable.

Their sacrifices make my comforts affordable.

  • Are these comforts really affordable when they are gained through the sacrifice of others?
  • Is our daily surplus even ours when it is gained through the sacrifice of others?

This is the supply and demand economics of the world economy that we have built and yesterday in the grocery as I watched an empty cart go by it felt backwards, if felt upside down, it felt turned around and it felt wrong.

Lord please help me remember the backs of others that I am standing on the next time I go to the grocery and come out with a little extra in my pocket.  Please inspire Your generosity within my heart, help me to give with Your open hands and help me to remember that no comfort is truly affordable when it is gained through the sacrifice of another.

Remember our true home!

I am not usually a cynic, but today after spending too much at the grocery I arrived home, checked the mail and found a magazine that had a picture of probably a $5 million dollar home on the front with the article titled, “Love your home!”, and I thought to myself… seriously?  Do the people writing and publishing this magazine really believe that looking at photos of this outrageously extravagant house will help me and others love our homes?  Seriously… do they really believe this?

I took the magazine straight to the recycling box, because I certainly know that looking at it would not help me to love my home, but I have been wondering why it bothered me so much today.  Most days this wouldn’t phase me or bother me, but it did today.

Maybe my annoyance with this magazine is because, as scary as it is to say or to type, in a way it reminds me of my own expensive home, of my own excess, of my own greed, and of my own issues with envy?  Maybe for a moment I forgot about my true home?

Lord please be with me and remove envy from my heart and replace it with Your generosity and gratitude because I long to always love the home You have given to me while I am here, but most of all I long to always remember that You are my true home.

Please help me, I can’t do it without You, my Love.