Last week, I went shopping for orange juice. In Tesco’s they had a special offer, which I assumed had something to do with the fact that the four cartons of juice in front of me all had ‘Happy Christmas!’ written on them. The use-by date was the end of January. That was fine; we’d get it drunk by then. As I picked up the juice I noticed that behind it were all the newer, non-festive cartons. They were still on offer, but these ones had a use-by date for the end of February. Ha! I thought, you almost got me there. I nearly fell for the oldest trick in the book. I returned my Christmas reject and grabbed one of the newer cartons.
And then I paused.
I’ve been thinking recently about how the message of our culture is so deeply embedded in me that I don’t even notice. There are a bunch of things I do and think that I just assume are right. I’m trying hard to let my life be shaped by the Kingdom of God rather than the United Kingdom, but the values of the world I live in have got some deep, deep roots. In this case, swapping my orange juice was an instinct that I would associate with shrewdness, but what value was I really promoting?
If everyone did what I did, then Tesco’s would be left with four unsold gone-off cartons of orange juice that would probably end up in a landfill somewhere. And even if they did sell, and – let’s be honest – they probably would because not everyone cares about the things that I care about, why should I make someone else buy orange juice that I had rejected as being second-rate? Where’s the Kingdom of God in that? I could classify it as being sensible and shrewd and a good steward all I wanted, but what I had really done is made a choice to take the ‘best’ for myself without caring about what I left behind for others.
So I made a choice, there and then, to rebel against the wisdom of the world and the values of the self, and embrace – in a small way – the spirit of a Kingdom where I choose to put others before myself. Let someone else have until the end of February to finish their orange juice. We don’t need that extra month, and besides – I’d rather take a step towards having a heart orientated towards God in even the smallest, most ridiculous-seeming things.
