Pity Party
We like attention. From birth, we crave attention and the care of others in our life. We fuss and cry constantly as babes to make our desires and needs known to those who are around us. However, we do become conscious to the fact that we can utilize this to get what we want at some point. Consider the toddler who wants the toy that someone else has and pitches a fit to encourage the adults around to obtain that toy for them by force. Parents the world over have fallen victim to the tantrums in shopping center’s toy sections as children stomp, cry, and even scream their demands to their poor parents. The fact is that we are encouraged to be selfish manipulators even from birth.
The greater problem in all this is that we can lose track of the things that we really need and blur those lines with the things that we really just want. The longer luxury items are present around us the more common and mundane those items become. We grow a sense of entitlement and complacency demanding that those things be present in our lives. When they go missing, we find an opportunity to complain about their absence and hope that it forces others to take notice. We throw pity parties about vain things.
Jesus put it quite simply “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
(Mat 6:19-20) We like the attention that we receive when we fret and worry about these things out loud. Imagine if we were worrying about our eternity out loud. Imagine if we began to share with others the confidence we have in our eternity rather than the disappointment we have in this life. Imagine if we would work as hard to draw attention to our Lord as we do to draw attention to ourselves. This is what Christ has called each of us to do, and hopes that we might realize that it is not about us.
