But Wait! There's More!

It is a peaceful Saturday morning. Steve is at work, Ansley is in bed, and for the first Saturday I can remember for awhile I don't have a laundry list of school work to do. The house is clean and I'm really not sure what to do with myself.

In an effort to keep the house quiet for nap time, Isaac is watching TV. Usually we limit him to PBS kids because we know we can trust whatever is on, but this morning Qubo is on and I'm usually okay with that too, except for one thing: commercials.

Do you remember being a kid and seeing all of those amazing toys and McDonald's happy meals and little gadgets that you just knew would surely make you SO happy if mom or dad would just please please please buy you one? And then in the rare instance you actually did get that coveted item, it never quite looked like and worked as amazingly as your dreams had told you it would.

This morning it was the "Dreamlight", a stuffed animal that lights up and then turns itself off after twenty minutes. I know my son well, and I know his interest in a toy like that would die, well, before it even came in the mail. He likes GI Joes and superheroes and blowing things up, not cute cuddly stuffed animals that light up and play sweet lullabies. Nonetheless, he needed that cuddly little bundle of annoyance. I carefully explained, as we always do with marketing ploys, that those Dreamlight people just want your money so they make you think you want something that you really don't. We prefer a little dose of reality to handle these things. Just call me the dream crusher.

But don't we, the grown-ups who are supposed to rise above these things, do the same thing in a much larger, more dangerous scale? If I can finally move into that house (guilty), get that bigger dining room table (ahem), or go on that vacation (oh the sunshine), then I will feel whole, complete, satisfied.

I want my little boy to be able to see through these things, to see what's going in his heart and where the world wants to lead him so he can run fast in the other direction. And I want that for myself. It's easy to see through the cheesy kids toy commercials, but we're so easily blinded by our hearts desires that in the end will never satisfy, never be quenched.

Jesus says "Seek first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you" Matthew 6:33