That was the theme of Aaron Bryant’s sermon at church today. Specifically, it was about how God was fully content with Jesus and how we can have that contentment of God through Jesus. Well, he said it better than that, but that’s the gist of it.

This holiday season, just about every ad you see, hear, and read will play off of an underlying discontent. The cure is to buy this car or that television or this deodorant or that mattress.

The only problem with that is the satisfaction from buying things is temporary. As you might have heard before, we all have a God-shaped vacuum inside of us that God and nothing else will fill.

Even though I know that (at least intellectually), I still want to find contentment through more stuff. My Amazon wish list isn’t quite as ridiculous as it used to be, but it’s still shows how stuff-obsessed I am even now.

If I look back to the Christmases of my childhood, I can probably remember about 5% of the presents I received. What I recall most are the memories of family and friends and, above all, hearing the Christmas story of God coming near in Jesus and loving it more and more and I began to understand it more and more.

So many presents and things that are supposed to bring true contentment will end up at a local Goodwill or even the local dumpster once they lose their appeal, but true contentment in God is something that will last through this and every holiday season.