Confession: I really like HGTV (the Home and Garden cable TV network, for the uninitiated). I adore the Gaineses on Fixer Upper. The Property Brothers and House Hunters are quite wonderful as well. I’ve spent a good amount of my winter break time drinking in these home renovation fantasies, and I’m starting to notice a trend: I can’t watch these shows without playing the comparison game.
I’m either lamenting the fact that we have chosen to live in such an expensive part of the country (“Did you know that we could own a five bedroom single-family home on an island in Georgia if we sold our tiny Southern California townhouse?!”) or painting vivid mental pictures of how I could completely overhaul our kitchen (“It would surely add value to our property, right?”).
I don’t know about you, but when I think about limiting media intake, I’m usually most concerned with the obvious: crude language, explicit sexual content, disturbing violence. I don’t usually think about filtering what I watch on the Home and Garden network. I like to think that there are media safe havens where the ick can’t reach me. (To that point, I read a really insightful movie review about Disney’s take on Into the Woods here.)
When we’re putting things before our eyes and inviting them into our minds and hearts, we ought to be aware of the subtle– and not so subtle– messages being communicated and received. For me, I have to ask myself, “What are the shows we watch that are created to cultivate a sense of discontentment?”
Thankfully, the prayerful self-evaluative process has helped quite a bit. As I pause to reflect on how I’m relating to what I’ve been watching, I’m reminded of other things I have put in my mind and heart. Tidbits like the “Be Rich” sermon series Andy Stanley delivered in 2014. He poked fun at how Americans take perfectly good kitchens and demolish them to create bigger and better kitchens. Ahem. More significantly, Paul’s words to Timothy ring clear in my mind:
Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and generous to those in need, always being ready to share with others. By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may experience true life (1 Tim. 6:17-19 NLT).
Tell them to use their money to do good. When I’m faced with all the comparison and temptation to pour money into our home, I remember these words. I wrestle with how to balance the urge to make my family’s home pleasant with the unnamed “good” doing. What good should I be doing? How can I combat the incessant urge to perfect my space? It’s yet another reminder that my daily life, little by little and decision by decision, is a conversational walk with Jesus who’s leading me along the way. I just need to remember that I am the fixer upper, in need of some quality time with the master builder.
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