In the places we lack

Lately, I have been buying a lot of things and spending a lot of money. It feels like I can hardly help myself in this pursuit of food, clothes, gifts for people, really, anything to purchase that, before I click the button or swipe my credit card, I feel like I can't do without. It is fun and nice to have the things I want, but the excitement each thing brings doesn't last like I hope.

While I don't think it is intrinsically bad to buy things, I have been wondering if there is something deeper to my insatiable desire to get more and more. Perhaps it reveals a deeper desire of my heart: the desire for newness. I want to be made new. And perhaps it reminds me of my own lack, that place inside me that is wanting, and my inability as a human to fill it in a lasting way that satisfies. We are back to Eve in the garden: I want to be self-sufficient, taking for myself rather than having the trust and faith in God's character and love for me to receive as a beloved daughter.

In her blog post "A Lime," Charissa Brim writes about her experience of needing only one more item on her grocery list: a lime. When she gets to the fruit section, every fruit is fully stocked. But in the space above the sign labeled "limes" with the price, there is only empty space. She gets defensive as she realizes: There are zero limes in the store.

"The fact that the entire grocery store was out of limes (and only out of limes) felt oddly targeted, almost personal," she writes. "Sometimes, it feels like the Store of Life is completely, and intentionally, out of just the thing I'm looking for. Throughout my life, this has looked like rest, money, friendships, mental health, family stability, romantic love, babies, a job -- the list is never-ending, isn't it?"

She goes on to receive the truth that God is for her, and as she makes mental lists of the ways that is true as well as the ways it seems true God has not been for her, she realizes: "Life can be scarce and abundant all at the same time. And it is okay to acknowledge both."

In my lack, I think about the ways Jesus loves people whom society thinks have nothing to offer. They offer him their faith and their desire, and he works miracles in their lives, healing their interior and external wounds and bringing others to faith in the process. He gives sight to a man who expresses the desire to see in Luke 18:35-43. He gives a man who is sick the ability to walk in John 5:1-18. And he stops the bleeding of a woman who has spent everything she has on doctors who can't cure her, ushering her back into the community and transforming her shame in Luke 9:40-56. And that's just before he gives life to a girl who is dead. These people have nothing except for lack, and in their lack, they call out and they reach out to Jesus. He makes them new.

Josh Garrels' version of the song "Steadfast" by Sandra Mccracken says, "In the moment of emptiness, all was fulfilled." May we not try to satisfy our places of lack for ourselves. Instead, let us leave them empty and cry out, offering them to Jesus as a throne or a crown of thorns or a gardening space where he is free to tend to us. To unearth, prune, uproot, plant.

Maybe then, we will be given new eyes to realize what we consider lack is treasure.