“If I could make a wish, I think I’d pass.  Can’t think of anything I need.”

Driven by the power of making more money, a free market system is always in need of more.  In order to meet that need, innovation turns to marketing and new ideas. Invention and new discoveries feed the cavernous craving to always have something new.  “Out with the old, and in with the new” is the tactic that seems to be commonly applied.  If there are no new products or inventions available,  we turn to re-invention to feed the market.  The well used is replaced with the new and improved, the reformulated, or at least the repackaged.  To simply turn a profit is not the goal.  There must be a projection toward the next opportunity, along with estimates of the values it will produce.  The status-quo is not nearly good enough.  We have to raise the projections for tomorrow so that it will be even better than today.

There is pressure.  Yes, pressure is needed.  We are reminded by the consultants, “You only get the toothpaste out of the tube by applying pressure.”  An economic market has to be driven if it is to have any measure of success. 

What works for the market may not always be good for us.  We are designed with limits.  While the movie reminds us that money never sleeps, people do.  We long to say, “I have all that I need.”  We look for that point of satisfaction.  We may have no idea where it is or how we will find it, but we still look for it.  I believe we long for that time and place where all pressure is gone.  Think about it.

Imagine being at such a point in your life that there is no desire beyond what you have.  Most of us can think of some experience in which, at least for a moment, everything was all that we wanted it to be.  Maybe it was that moment when the love of your life uttered those words of permanent attachment, “I do.”  Maybe it was when you looked into the eyes of your first child.  Maybe it was a holiday, when all the family was gathered in joy.  The similarity that these events all share is that they offer that precious and vital sense of complete satisfaction.  What a moment!  What a feeling!  We might say, “It was almost heaven.”

There may well be moments; special times of seemingly complete fulfillment.  Sadly, they do not last.  Sooner more than later, these moments pass.  We long for more.

There is a promise.  There is a place.  There is a fulfillment, complete and sure.  There is a life that holds that long desired sense.  In that life there are no more wishes, no more hopes, no more longings.  In that life everything is always complete.  It is not almost heaven.  It is heaven.

“In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:2-3),

Russ