“Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance.” Is. 55:1,2
“It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can.” wrote C.S. Lewis. What he meant by this is that God’s calling upon our lives is not primarily one of self-denial, but of God-devouring. We give up the fool’s gold so there is enough room in our hands to seize the true gold - Jesus Himself.
Note the order of the verbs in vs.2 - "listen...eat...delight". Not "listen...obey...proclaim" as many believers would have it. It's as if God is saying, "Take time to fully savor me. Don't just listen, but eat. Don't rush the meal though...delight in it." Hmm...maybe duty and delight are not an oxymoron after all. Perhaps they were always meant to be best of friends.
In the Caribbean I am told that they catch monkeys by drilling a hole through a coconut and placing peanuts inside. The hole is just large enough for the monkey to get his hand through, but too small to get it out unless he lets go of the peanuts. The coconut is then tied to a tree and left out for the unsuspecting monkey. The monkey comes along and slips his hand into the coconut to take hold of the peanuts. Because the monkey is so determined to hold on to the peanuts, he ultimately forfeits his freedom to keep his catch intact. If only he realized the preciousness of what he was giving up by holding on to the peanuts!
Do we not so often do the very same thing? We hold tenaciously to the peanuts of this world – sex, alcohol, ambition, hobbies, cars, work, approval of men, money, religious respectability, etc. because sin has duped us into believing that life can be found in earthly trinkets that provide everything but God. Blaise Pascal wrote,
“There once was in man a true happiness of which now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.”
As Isaiah puts it, we “spend money for that which is not bread” and our “wages for what does not satisfy”. The unalterable reality is that the quality of life we yearn for and were made for can only be found in a life of shameless gluttony; one of unrestrained feasting upon the Bread of Life. There is no greater freedom or exhilaration than this. But as long as we allow ourselves to settle for the peanuts of earth, this Bread of Heaven will never have the opportunity to delightfully satisfy our divinely implanted taste-buds. God calls us to give up the peanuts so there is enough room in our mouths for the best; namely Him and His unrivaled presence. And this my friends, is a “Christian duty” we can all live with. No – live by.
Flashpoint: The preeminent reason to give up the trinkets to make room for the Treasure.
