“It is not unheard of for us to chafe at our neediness. Having to ask for help is an admission that we can’t do this on our own, that we are not in control. There is something in us … that would prefer never to have to ask for help. Consumerism is a narcotic that dulls the awareness that we are in need. By buying what we need, we assume control of our lives. We replace a sense of need with a sense of ownership, and our sense of neediness recedes. Technology is a narcotic. It depersonalizes needs to something that can be handled by a machine or a device. We replace a sense of need by the satisfaction of being in control: ‘I will manage my own needs, thank you.’ Money and machines anaesthetize neediness. They put us in charge, in control. As long as the money holds out and the machines are in good repair, we don’t have to pray. But there is a steep price to pay. Narcotics diminish the capacity for personal relationships. Narcotics dull and finally destroy the capacity for living, feeling, loving, enjoying. And praying. When we choose to live with a diminished sense of the limits imposed by our basic neediness, we falsify our place in the intricate and marvelous goodness of our creation, what the psalmists celebrate as the ‘land of the living.’ A refusal to work within limits is a stubborn, rebellious refusal to receive life as a gift. Needs are not limitations that interfere with or refuse or flatten our lives. Needs prepare us for a life of receptivity, a readiness to receive what can only be received as gift. Needs open the door into this vast giving-receiving ecological intricacy of sky and sea, clover and bee, man and wife, horse and carriage. Needs don’t reduce us to ‘mere’ creatures; they provide the conditions in which we are able to live in reciprocal relation with wildflowers and woodpeckers, with sons and daughters, with parents and grandparents. The limitations inherent in need prevent us from illusions of grandeur and the isolations of selfish pride. …Limits don’t limit us from being fully human. They only limit us from being God.” Eugene Peterson

“He himself gives life and breath to everything,
and he satisfies every need.”
Acts 17:25

Moving From the Head to the Heart

• Would you rather do it yourself without any help from anyone? If so, why?
• Do you use consumerism or technology to avoid neediness?
• What is to be lost in denying neediness? …gained in embracing it?

Abba, help me take my rightful place in this world, experiencing the great ecology of the land of the living.

For More: Tell It Slant by Eugene Peterson

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