Impulse...

It's been awhile (if anyone reads this), I'm sorry!

As I was hanging out in the Indianapolis airport two weeks ago waiting for a flight that was inevitably delayed an hour, I came across the most interesting impulse buy perhaps EVER. Now I admit, I'm a sucker for the impulse buy -my senior year of college I spent my tax refund check 3 different times before it ever came, one of those times an impulsive purchase of a $300 palm pilot back in the early days of palm piloting. I often get suckered into the soda or the candy bar in the checkout line, and let me loose anywhere near a bookstore and impulse damage is sure to ensue.

But as I strolled through the Northwest terminal I came across the most fascinating vending machine ever. Not only can you now buy stamps, sodas, snickers and other sundry items in a vending machine, but at least in the Indy airport you can stop off and buy an IPOD.

I kid you not, right there on the concourse in a vending machine you could choose between the IPOD video, IPOD mini, IPOD nano and a variety of IPOD accessories, all for the impulse price of anwhere between $19.99 and $599.

As I stood there and checked out this fascinating site, I wondered who in their right mind would buy an IPOD out of a vending machine. As I continued to ponder this, however, I realized that in fact I given the right financial circumstances (ie not being married to a wife obsessed with lowering some college consumer debt the size of Ghana's GDP) would gladly put my Discover Card into said vending machine and get on my flight with a brand new IPOD nano. Shoot, for another $12 or so I could even charge it up at one of the many fee-based charging stations that airports now have. (And thus is the attitude that allowed me to accumulate a Ghana-esque tab while in college)

This whole line of thought really got me thinking about this idea of impulse, though.

Why do we spend so much of our lives living and acting on impulse? Why do I get temporarily 'down' and impulsively spend $4.36 on a venti vanilla latte - like that will somehow perk me back up again? Why do I impulsively spend $25 on a new spy thriller when were I a little more patient I could check it out of the UNC library for free?

Why don't these same impulses drive our relationship with the one constant in our life - Jesus?

In fact, if you're anything like me, you often find that these very impulses overtake that one relationship that we should be cultivating the most. I wake up in the morning, knowing that I want (and need) to spend time with the Lord. But impulsively I jump on the laptop to see if I got any 'must read' e-mails. An hour later I have read and replied to e-mails, impulsively checked ESPN, MSNBC, Scout.com and myriad other sites, and now I'm running late so I don't have time to spend with the Lord. I'd do it later, but some other impulsive thing comes up - like porch time with the friends, a tv show that we want to watch (because we can't DVR it and watch it later), or more e-mails that 'must' be responded to.

Oh that we would find a way to live life to the FULL, while also not always living our life purely out of our impulses. People think that Paul of the Bible is crazy when in Romans he goes on this diatribe of:

"what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do......Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it."
(Romans 7:15-21)

You know what I think he is - NORMAL, just like you and I as we battle what we know we should do with the everday impulses that pop into our lives. Or at least I hope so!

So my goal this week is to reign in the impulses a little bit. The laptop is back in the shop (screen broke this time - oh the agony of it all), Kim is out of town for 48 hours, and I have so much work to do that I can barely see over it. Sounds like a great week to stick to a schedule doesn't it? Also sounds like a great week for the devil of impulsiveness to totally mess it all up!