Satisfied

This week marks one of the most beloved traditions in American history. Every year on this week, we come together to celebrate what has become so special to us. Families make plans for weeks, sometimes months, to be able to engage this day together, to share some space and make some memories and celebrate. 

Yes, it's Black Friday. 

As astute observer once noted, and many good-natured cynics have since repeated via social media, that Black Friday is so strange because it's a day in which we get up early and stand in line for hours just to trample each other save money on things we don't need exactly one sunrise after we spent the day being thankful for all that we already have. 

Humans are so silly sometimes. 

But...the astute observer is right about us. This is who we are - broadly. Not everyone fits that mold, of course, but culturally, this is where we're at - turning into absolute monsters to get a good deal right after being content with what we already have. 

And...it's true about us as Christians, too. 

How many times have we sat at this Table? How many pieces of bread have we broken off? How many cups of juice have we poured? How many times have we come and feasted, remembered, celebrated the sacrifice of Jesus and His invitation to us to share this intimate space with Him...only to walk out the door of our churches and live like we don't love Jesus...or like He doesn't love us? 

Another astute observer (it's probably not the same guy; it might have been, but it's probably not) once said, and it has been passed through Christian circles for generations now, that the mark of a Christian is not what you do on Sunday, but how you live the other six days of the week. 

And we, like cultural Americans, are just so good at walking out the doors of the church and living like we didn't just spend an hour of our lives confessing our love and our belovedness and celebrating mercy and grace and committing ourselves to the kind of life that God always imagined for us, from the very moment that He knit us together in our mothers' wombs. 

We come and we break the bread and we drink the juice and we walk out of the church and into the world like we're ravenously hungry, like we didn't just have a meal that fills us up to the depths of our bones. 

Christians are so silly sometimes. 

What would it take for us to live differently? What would it take for us to settle into that Sunday morning feeling and carry it throughout the rest of the week? What would it take for us to let that be the real testament of who we are and not lose ourselves just one sunrise later to a mass frenzy of cultural demand? 

What would it mean for us if we were a people who were just as thankful on Friday as we were on Thursday? 

Who were just as loving on Monday as we were on Sunday? 

Who were just as beloved tomorrow as we are today? 

What if we were a people who eat this bread and drink this juice and go out into the world satisfied and sanctified? 

It would change our witness to the world.