Is This What We've Become?

This is my neighbor's house. He's got a star, Sponge Bob, a snowman, Rudolph, a snow globe, and candy canes. For Halloween, he had a giant, gory vampire bat creature dripping blood and hanging upside down from his garage.

I don't want to sound prudish, or like I'm preaching, but...GOSH, is this what we've become? We have taken God out of everything, it seems, even the holiday that is supposed to be about Him. Worse, we've made everything so based on materialism and "stuff" that Sponge Bob, the obnoxious sponge, sells Christmas, and mangers offend. 

I shudder when we drive by this house. To me, it exemplifies what Christmas has become for so many--in all its glittery horror.

I felt this way when the world was gearing up for black Friday. Everyone seemed to be forgetting to pause and to say thank you to God for their blessings and their families. In this warp speed we call life, we work our tails off to buy more stuff to spend less time with the people the "stuff" is supposed to be for.

Henry David Thoreau talked about simplifying. "I went to the woods to live deliberately, to suck the marrow out of life." 

I don't feel like we live deliberately any more. We live in a shiny, flashy blur. We live on autopilot. We don't make the most important things meaningful. I see it in my students sometimes. There is a loneliness in their eyes. They long for recognition and attention. They need to matter. Their parents have not only stopped monitoring their homework, they have stopped teaching them basic life lessons- manners and morals, kindness, giving....love.

This isn't the time of year I want to focus on this. I won't spend another precious minute worrying about it, but I just had to VENT. 

 ¹⁹ “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰ But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

~Matthew 6: 19-21