The most quasi-religious day of the year approaches. Black Friday. Retailers are already disappointed. Some toys that were hot last year have tanked this year. Some toys that were so hot they were impossible to keep in stock are now almost impossible to dump. But this shouldn’t be a surprise. Remember cabbage patch dolls–the ones with dimpled, cantaloupe heads? (I remember forking out a cool $100 for one of them in 1984 for my kid sister. I had to buy it in Texas because Louisiana was fresh out). They were the rage until, like the brontosaur, they retreated back into the fossil record. Then there was the Tickle-Me-Elmo with the red shag carpet skin. Each toy was the flavor of the season for a brief moment. All of them remind me of something the Apostle John wrote 2,000 years ago.
“The world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17). Every time a toy or a fad rises and falls, when one bestseller dethrones another, when a hit song starts to slip down the charts, or when another television series goes belly up, I think of that verse. It tells me that after the dust settles there’s only one thing guaranteed to be there—folks who were lined up on the will of God.
