A day of small idols

I was standing near a group of school mums, waiting for my kids to come out of school, when I overheard this one-sided conversation:

“It’s my island bench! I’ve always wanted one! It’s mine. Mine!
“The new kitchen goes nearly the whole length of the house. There was this little deck, you see, and it was always hot because the sun shone straight on it. So we filled it in and made this huge kitchen. With room for my island bench.
“It’s my island bench! I’ve always wanted one. It cost a lot, that island bench.
“My mother-in-law wanted to make gnocchi on it. Gnocchi! Can you believe that? You know, the potato has to be really hot. Then you make those little things, then they dry and you have to scrape them off the bench. Scrape them! Off my bench! I don’t think so. I’m not letting anyone make gnocchi on my island bench.
“It’s my island bench. I’m not making biscuits on there! It cost a lot, my island bench.”

Listener: “So what surface does it have?”

“It’s laminate. But really good laminate, y’know? Like, if you saw it, it’s really good laminate.
“It’s my island bench. Mine, I tell you! I’ve always wanted one! It’s mine.”

I don’t know what was happening in this woman’s life or relationships that made her feel so strongly about her island bench, or about how it was being used against her wishes. Part of me longs to go back, talk with her, and find out more, because her attitude is also sometimes mine. Like her, my heart becomes attached to the things around me.

I am frightened to think how easily we can become like the woman from CS Lewis’s The Great Divorce, clinging forever to a smothering love for her son:

No one had a right to come between me and my son. Not even God. Tell Him that to His face. I want my boy, and I mean to have him. He is mine, do you understand? Mine, mine, mine for ever and ever.¹

Like the other empty souls in Lewis’s book, this woman goes into eternity holding desperately to the one thing she can’t give up, endlessly tormented by an attachment she hates but fears to lose, until she dwindles to a soul that is “nearly nothing... shrunk, shut up in itself”.²

Have we become so small that our hearts can be won by a smartphone or an island bench? With souls made for the worship of the infinite God, will we give them instead to the worship of a secure nest-egg, an attitude of bitterness, or a nice house in a good suburb? Have we become so small, so nearly nothing?

What will we cling to, screaming that we can’t let go, as we are dragged into eternity?

How much better to give up the small joys of this world for an infinite and everlasting joy! To spend eternity endlessly satisfied by the only One who can fulfil every desire of every corner of our hearts. With Jesus, who fills us with joy in his presence and eternal pleasures at his right hand (Ps 16:11).

1. CS Lewis, The Great Divorce, HarperCollins, New York, 2001, p. 103.

2. Lewis, p. 139.

Photo credit: RaeAllen