Little Trinkets

Little Trinkets

Just past the front doors of the discount store I frequent sits a section of ever-changing random stuff—all priced at a dollar or less. Mini notepads. Doggie treats. Tiny vases. Plastic pencil cases. Refrigerator magnets. I’m sure no one who visits the store regularly arrives with a shopping list that says “Four mini notepads, one fridge magnet, and a vase too small for more than one flower.” They’re coming for more practical items, but I’ll bet many of them, like me, get caught in the sticky web of the trinket section.

The dollar section sprang to mind as I read this searing sentence by Calvin Miller: “To desire only what Christ gives and not to desire Christ Himself is to be bought off by little trinkets, never to own the greater treasure of His indwelling presence.”^a

I wonder how many times I’ve failed to get very far past the front door of my spiritual life because I’ve been “bought off” by the immediately gratifying gifts of God and ceased to pursue him? What a tragedy it would be if I allowed good health or a mate or money to satiate my hunger for the Holy One. What a waste to “fill my cart” with things that will only temporarily satisfy—as good as they might be—and fail to cultivate a true and abiding oneness with the Giver of all good things.

What steers me past the dollar aisle at the discount store when I don’t stop? Sometimes I have one thing in mind when I arrive and little desire to tarry over less. Like a plunger because the kitchen sink is clogged. But it doesn’t have to be an urgent need that pushes me on. It can also be the knowledge that there are other, more lasting and beautiful things stocked further in. And I want to discover them.

Little trinkets are fine, just not fine enough. And they can all too easily divert me from my real and true purpose: to know the greater treasure who is Christ, and to delight not in what he gives but in him and him alone.

I look upon everything as loss compared with the overwhelming gain of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord.

Philippians 3:7, PHILLIPS

^a Calvin Miller, Into the Depths of God (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2000), 82.