Quote of the Day

This is a quote from Donald Miller's book Through Painted Deserts. It's a great book and the quote is just a tiny part of a larger discussion that helped change the way I think about buying things. I don't seem to struggle as much lately with the desire to go buy something just to buy something and this may be part of why.

It makes sense, if you think about it. I mean we stood out in the desert this morning, and the chemicals in my brain poured soothingly through the gray matter, as if to massage with fingers the most tender part of my mind, as if to say, this is what a human is supposed to feel. This is what we were made for, to watch the beauty of light fill up earth's canvas, to make dirt come alive; like fairy dust, making trees and cacti and humans from the magic of its propulsion. It makes me wonder, now, how easily the brain can be tricked out of what it was supposed to feel, how easily the brain can be tricked by somebody who has a used car to sell, a new perfume, whatever. You will feel what you were made to feel if you buy this thing I am selling. But could the thing you and I were supposed to feel, the thing you and I were supposed to be, cost nothing?.......And maybe when a person doesn't buy the lies anymore, when a human stops long enough to realize the stuff people say to get us to part with our money often isn't true, we can finally see the sunrise..........and know......that life is being given to me as a gift, that light is a metaphor, and God is doing these things to dazzle us.

It was, of course, longer and the idea is alluded to many times in ways that make it clearer and clearer through the book, but you get the idea. It's a good book. You should read it.