February 23: What Do We Run To?

Leviticus 14:1-57

Mark 6:30-56

Psalm 40:1-10

Proverbs 10:11-12

"So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place.  But many who saw them leaving recognized them and RAN ON FOOT from all the towns and got there ahead of them."

Black Friday.  It is the Friday after the third Thursday in November, the day after Thanksgiving, the day the country prepares a meal, and gathers to give thanks for all we have.  It is, perversely, one of the three biggest shopping days in the US, when stores draw holiday shoppers with unbelievable prices on items high in demand.  Game consoles and video games.  TVs and other electronics.  Computers.  You name it.  

The lines waiting for stores to open have gotten so long there are many who, having polished off their Thanksgiving dinners, choose to exercise it off by running to the stores before they do dishes.  They burn even more calories stomping their feet trying to keep warm outside the store, then rushing into the store when it opens, sometimes trampling the people in front of them, sometimes getting into fights over particular items.   All for a TV that will break or a game console that will be obsolete in a couple of years. 

How different might our lives be if hungered for our Lord the same way we wanted new toys, if we ran to Jesus with the same frantic desperation of a frugal shopper on Black Friday?  The people described in today's NT reading did just that.  And what did they get for their efforts?  Not entertainment or video games.  They got to hear our Lord, they got to witness a miracle, they probably experienced a transformation one would not receive from the latest multi-player game on the largest, highest definition television.  Heck, they even got a meal they didn't have to prepare.  

Lord, forgive us.  We expend so much effort chasing things that fade and rust.  Change our hearts.  Teach us instead to expend that effort chasing you, with the same desperation as the Israelites did.  And as you did with them, reward our efforts by supplying both our material and, more importantly, our spiritual needs.