Here’s a piece submitted for publication in our local Mount Gambier paper.
Last year my sister asked if I could come to Maryborough in Queensland to celebrate her fortieth birthday. I tried to sound positive but also said she’d asked for a hard thing: it was a long way to travel from Mount Gambier to provincial Queensland, we’d need a full-time chauffeur to move our children to their various daily destinations back home, along with a few other less pressing considerations.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, I got a message that my mother wasn’t well.
Arrangements were quickly put in place and we gathered together in Hervey Bay to provide some necessary support. Mum’s situation looks more stable and optimistic now.
And last night, on the date of my sister’s fortieth birthday, I sat at her table, ate a wonderful meal, celebrated with her, and marveled at the way in which something I thought was difficult had actually come to pass.
What made it happen though, was that the focus of the situation changed from that of a want to a need.
Sometimes we’re not able to discern between needs and wants. In infancy everything is considered a need, everything is desired immediately and we can’t imagine not having it straight away. As we grow and mature, we learn that some of what we thought of as needs were only wants, that we could do without whatever it was, or we learned to wait a while before we got it.
A lot of influences around us seek to undo this growth, suggesting that delaying our attainment of wants is unnecessary. You’ll note these folk usually have something to sell, or want you to expand the limit on your credit card. The effect of this societal pressure to treat every want as a need is more than increasing unmanageable debt and the possession of heaps of unnecessary junk.
Ultimately it serves to unwind the process of growth and maturing that learning to discern between wants and needs produces. It serves to infantilise our culture and cultivate immaturity and self-centeredness.
Jesus once encountered a man who had climbed a tree to get a better view of him. His life was marked by a pattern which indicated he had a lot of trouble discerning needs and wants. He had much, but knew he didn’t have what he truly needed.
But Jesus didn’t simply tell him to grow up and get better priorities.
Instead he invites himself over to the man’s house so the man can get to know Jesus better. Jesus believed that a relationship with him was the key to a life where wants and even needs recede and where we become conduits of life to others.
The invitation continues to this day. If you’ve come to the point of understanding that your peace and security will never come from your next acquisition or relationship, ask Jesus around. Read about him in the Bible, talk to a Christian about their experience, and see how much he’ll be a friend to you.
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