“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Jeremiah 29:5-7
“Addiction” might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates society. Our addiction make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love. These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. As long as we live within the world’s delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests in “the distant country,” leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled. In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father’s home. The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in “a distant country.” It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up.”
Henri Nouwen in The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming (Crown Publishing, 2013) 42.
Most people who live in “the distant country” don’t realize how addictions control them. They’ve been deluded to seek their own prosperity rather the prosperity of the place where God has planted them.
Related to generosity, rather than enjoy and share God’s blessings, they accumulate wealth and power and pursue lavish consumption of food and drink. These things will never satisfy. They only leave us disillusioned.
What is the pathway from “the distant country” to experience the only peace and prosperity that satisfies? We must stop aiming at self-fulfillment and focus on knowing Christ who is the only One who satisfies.
This weekend people across USA celebrate Independence Day. Let’s instead think about dependence on Christ and interdependence with one another. Ponder what addictions hold you captive. Fast from them and feast on Jesus. See what happens.