Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Jeff Parrott.

Comfort food, comfort drinking, retail therapy, binging TV shows, binge scrolling.

This is just a small list of the big ways people tend to chase comfort. These comforts are often measured by the phrase, just one more,

just one more bite, just one more item in my online shopping cart, just one more pour into the glass, just one more

show to watch, just one more swipe of the screen. When your comfort is measured by just one more,

it's eventually exposed as just not enough. These sources of comfort show up in our personal habits, but also in our

cultural moment. Consider how today, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, it's marked by

an overwhelming societal impulse to get more and more for less and less. Just one more deal to find. And of course,

there's nothing wrong with finding a sale for a loved one, but oftentimes we're not just looking

for a sale. We're looking for satisfaction. It's no wonder that the holiday shopping season is

regularly cited as one of the most

stressful times of the year. Whether it's shopping, eating, drinking, scrolling, or viewing,

these sources of comfort promise to help us feel in control when life is out of control.

But while they promise freedom and control, they put us in

fetters. They constrain us within the prison of dopamine loops. They suggest that we are the

consumers when really we are the ones being consumed. The comfort offered in these cultural

medicines turns out to be a counterfeit comfort.

In a world full of unpredictability, suffering, and hostility, our need for comfort will never

disappear. But what would it look like to find comfort in something that isn't counterfeit,

something that doesn't trap us? How can we pursue comfort in something that isn't counterfeit, something that doesn't trap us?

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