Valuing What We Have

I mentioned last week that one of the things I like about summer is riding my bike around town.  I really do enjoy that.  I ride at a speed of about ten to eleven miles an hour, on average.  That’s not setting any speed records, obviously, but it’s an old fashioned one-speed bike.  Besides, if I ride for an hour, which I often do, I get about eleven miles in, and that’s not so bad for a fifty-seven-year old.

There are, of course, a lot of days during the year when I can’t ride my bike.  All winter, for example.  And the first part of spring.  During those times, I have a machine that I use indoors.  It’s called a “Gazelle Glider”, so if you’ve noticed that I’m as graceful as a gazelle, you now know why.  Anyway, the way the climate is around here, there are more months of the year that I cannot ride the bike outside than there are months that I can.  This means that, after a while, I start to get really tired of using the Gazelle Glider.  As the winter turns into spring, and the weather starts to get warmer, I get really anxious for it to get warm enough for me to start riding the bike outside again.

As we get to this time of year, though, and I’ve ridden my bicycle around quite a bit, an odd thing happens.  I start to get kind of anxious to get back on the old Gazelle Glider again.  There’s a part of me that kind of welcomes the coming of cold weather so that I can.  That wears off fairly quickly—within a few weeks I’m wishing I could be on the bike again—but for a while, just the idea of doing something different kind of appeals to me.

It seems like it’s a part of human nature that we tend to over-value the things we don’t have and under-value the things we do have.  When I can’t ride the bicycle, it’s the main thing I want to do.  But after a while, when I can ride the bicycle, I start wanting to do something else.

It’s something that goes back to the story of Adam and Eve, really.  God gave Adam and Eve everything a person could possibly want.  There was just one thing that was not allowed to them.  So what was the one thing they wanted?  The one thing they couldn’t have.  All those things they could have just could not match up, in their minds, with the one thing they could not have.

Wanting what we don’t have is not all bad, of course.  Sometimes that’s what keeps us striving to do better.  Some of the greatest advancements in the history of the world have come because people wanted something they did not have, and because they wanted it they invented it.  There are ways in which the world would be a poorer place if we just settled for things as they are rather than wanting things to be better.

Still, we should take the time to realize how wonderful the things are that we already have, and to be grateful for them.  And of course, some of those “things” are not things at all.  The beauty all around us, the friends we have, the love that we share with others.  And, of course, the love that God gives to each of us.  Let’s make sure we don’t take those things for granted.  Let’s make sure we appreciate those things and are grateful for them.  Because, as the Bible tells us, “things” will all wither away.  But love does not.  Love is eternal.  Love never fails.  It’s okay to want things.  But the main thing we need is love.