We've been under stay home orders for over a month. What are you missing the most? Hanging out with your crew? Going to a movie or sporting event? Really good Tex-Mex with fresh chips and salsa, warm tortillas and a sizzling pan full of fajita meat? Or maybe it's more serious. Are you missing your job and a steady paycheck? Or a friend or family member is in the hospital. I have a friend who's been in the hospital for weeks and will continue to be there for the foreseeable future. Praise God, he's recovering, but he hasn't seen his family (and they haven't seen him) since he was admitted. The quickest way to find out what's important to you is to take everything away. What do you prioritize when your options are limited? What do you long for that you can't have? Hear me, some of that is good. Craving community, time with other people, is biblical. We were made for that and God wants that for us. But sometimes the thing we value most, or more accurately, how we value it, is not biblical. In fact, the Bible calls it idolatry. As you can imagine, God has a few things to say about it. First, here's what Tim Keller says about idols in his book Counterfeit Gods, "An idol is anything more important to you than God. Anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God. Anything you seek to give you what only God can give. Anything that is so central and essential to your life, that should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living." Idols don't have to be bad things, either. They can be good things. The thing isn't what makes it an idol. Your attitude toward the thing is. For example, basketball is a gift from God. It's fun, promotes good health, teamwork and healthy competition. But when basketball becomes more important in your life than God, then it becomes an idol. So what does God say about idols, other than that worshiping them is a sin and you should avoid them? My favorite passage about idols is in Isaiah 44. God completely blows open the absurdity of worshiping something that doesn't deserve it. The carpenter stretches a line; he marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes and marks it with a compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!” - Isaiah 44:13-17 God, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, is basically saying a carpenter chops down a tree, uses some of the wood to build a fire to keep himself warm, some of it to cook food and the rest he carves into an idol that he falls down and worships. It's just wood! It's the same substance that he burns for fuel. There's nothing special about it that would give him reason to treat it with any respect, and yet that's exactly what he does. Now take that concept and apply it to idols of today. Let's go back to our basketball example. What is basketball? Like the name literally says, it's putting a ball in a basket. How can that possibly be more important than the person who created the universe, populated it with galaxies, stars and planets, created life on one of those planets, nurtured it until 1891 when a man named James Naismith invented a game where you throw a soccer ball through a peach basket. Look, I love Kobe Bryant. He was one of the top players in history and the fiercest competitor that I've ever seen. But the people who were saying he completed their lives and they had a hole in their heart that would never be filled when he passed away were worshiping the wrong person. Kobe earned our admiration, sure. But he didn't earn our worship. No one will ever be more worthy of that than God. Back to the original question. While you're staying at home, what do you miss? What makes your heart ache? You might spend some of this forced free time to look at what you value, what you worship, and repent. God's not going anywhere. He deserves ALL of our worship and it's not too late to start now. by Rob Trahan