The Shopping Cart I Never Check Out
# The Shopping Cart I Never Check Out
RedeemedExistence daily devotional — September 24, 2026
I have forty-one items sitting in an online cart right now that I have no plan to buy. A pressure washer I do not need for a driveway that is perfectly clean. A watch that costs more than my first car. A kayak, of all things, for a river I have never once paddled. I add things to that cart most nights after my wife has gone to bed, scrolling with the television muted, and I almost never actually purchase anything. What I am doing, if I am honest, is not shopping. I am chasing a feeling I get for about four seconds when I hit "add to cart," a small flicker of anticipation that something new is about to make today feel less flat than it did an hour ago.
It never does. The flicker fades before I even close the tab, and most mornings I cannot remember what was in the cart the night before. I used to think this kind of restlessness only belonged to my drinking years, that particular hunger for whatever came next, whatever would finally be enough. Getting sober did not remove the hunger. It just took away my old way of feeding it and left the appetite standing there, looking for a new place to point itself. These days it points at a kayak I will never own instead of a bottle I no longer touch, but underneath both is the exact same restless engine, still running, still convinced that satisfaction is one purchase, one upgrade, one new thing away.
Solomon had access to more new things than I will ever see in my life, and he ran the experiment for me already so I would not have to. "I made my works great, I built myself houses, and planted myself vineyards. I made myself gardens and orchards, and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them" (Ecclesiastes 2:4-5, NKJV), he wrote, and he did not stop at gardens. He kept going, acquiring everything a heart could ask for, and then delivered the verdict at the end of the list. "Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 2:11, NKJV). Grasping for the wind is the most honest description of my cart I have ever read, older than the internet by three thousand years and somehow written about exactly what I do every night. He names the mechanism even more plainly a chapter earlier. "The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor the ear filled with hearing" (Ecclesiastes 1:8, NKJV). The eye was never built to stop wanting on its own. It takes something outside the eye to do that.
I used to assume contentment was a personality trait some people were simply born with, a calm gene I did not get. Paul dismantles that excuse plainly, because he was writing from a prison cell, not a garden. "Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content" (Philippians 4:11, NKJV). Learned. Not born with it, not stumbled into it by having enough money to stop worrying. He goes further, describing both directions of the swing I know well, the empty months and the flush ones. "I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need" (Philippians 4:12, NKJV). He calls that a secret, something learned over time under real pressure, not a fact he happened to be handed at birth.
What stops me short every time I read Paul's letters is how he never treats contentment as resignation, some flat acceptance of less than he wanted. He hands Timothy something sturdier than a coping mechanism. "Now godliness with contentment is great gain" (1 Timothy 6:6, NKJV). Gain. Not the absence of loss, an actual profit, the kind of profit a pressure washer or a kayak was never going to produce no matter how many times I almost bought one. And the writer of Hebrews ties that contentment to a specific promise instead of leaving it floating as a vague virtue. "Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you'" (Hebrews 13:5, NKJV). The contentment is not supposed to come from talking myself into liking what I already have. It comes from the presence of the One who is already staying, whether the cart fills up or stays empty.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once closed the gap, no matter how many nights I have argued myself out of buying the kayak. I can win that argument with my wallet and still lie there wanting something, because the want was never really about the kayak. Jesus met a woman at a well who understood a version of this ache better than she wanted to, having gone looking for something to fill her in five different marriages, and He told her plainly what any amount of drawing water never could. "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life" (John 4:13-14, NKJV). Thirst again is the whole story of my cart in four words. Every item I add promises to be the water that finally satisfies, and every one of them leaves me thirsty again by morning, because none of them was ever the actual water He meant.
He said something just as direct to a crowd chasing Him for another free meal after the miracle of the loaves. "And Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst'" (John 6:35, NKJV). I have spent so many nights feeding a hunger with things that were never bread at all, sawdust dressed up as satisfaction, gone by the time I woke up. Abiding in Him is not a discipline of wanting less. It is being fed by something that actually fills, so the appetite finally has somewhere real to land instead of circling the same empty cart every night looking for a reason to stay a little longer.
David describes what that fullness actually feels like from the inside, once he stopped looking for it in his own accomplishments. "You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Psalm 16:11, NKJV). Fullness of joy, not a longer list of possessions. Pleasures forevermore, not a flicker that fades before the tab closes. That kind of satisfaction was never going to be manufactured by my own reasoning about what I actually need versus what I merely want, because reasoning can win the argument about the kayak and still leave the deeper hunger completely untouched. Only the Spirit, abiding underneath the wanting itself, has ever actually quieted it, not by shaming me for wanting things, but by giving me something the wanting was always secretly pointing toward.
I still have forty-one items sitting in that cart tonight, and I am not going to pretend I deleted them while writing this, because that would not be honest. But I closed the laptop a little earlier than usual, and sat in the quiet instead of scrolling for a forty-second item, and something in me settled that no purchase, real or imagined, has ever managed to settle before. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly what you keep adding to your own cart hoping it will finally be enough. He has a plan for you that was never going to be completed by one more thing arriving on your doorstep, and He will never leave you to go on chasing that flicker by yourself.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Ecclesiastes 2:4-5; Ecclesiastes 2:11; Ecclesiastes 1:8; Philippians 4:11-12; 1 Timothy 6:6; Hebrews 13:5; John 4:13-14; John 6:35; Psalm 16:11.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional — September 24, 2026
I have forty-one items sitting in an online cart right now that I have no plan to buy. A pressure washer I do not need for a driveway that is perfectly clean. A watch that costs more than my first car. A kayak, of all things, for a river I have never once paddled. I add things to that cart most nights after my wife has gone to bed, scrolling with the television muted, and I almost never actually purchase anything. What I am doing, if I am honest, is not shopping. I am chasing a feeling I get for about four seconds when I hit "add to cart," a small flicker of anticipation that something new is about to make today feel less flat than it did an hour ago.
It never does. The flicker fades before I even close the tab, and most mornings I cannot remember what was in the cart the night before. I used to think this kind of restlessness only belonged to my drinking years, that particular hunger for whatever came next, whatever would finally be enough. Getting sober did not remove the hunger. It just took away my old way of feeding it and left the appetite standing there, looking for a new place to point itself. These days it points at a kayak I will never own instead of a bottle I no longer touch, but underneath both is the exact same restless engine, still running, still convinced that satisfaction is one purchase, one upgrade, one new thing away.
Solomon had access to more new things than I will ever see in my life, and he ran the experiment for me already so I would not have to. "I made my works great, I built myself houses, and planted myself vineyards. I made myself gardens and orchards, and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them" (Ecclesiastes 2:4-5, NKJV), he wrote, and he did not stop at gardens. He kept going, acquiring everything a heart could ask for, and then delivered the verdict at the end of the list. "Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 2:11, NKJV). Grasping for the wind is the most honest description of my cart I have ever read, older than the internet by three thousand years and somehow written about exactly what I do every night. He names the mechanism even more plainly a chapter earlier. "The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor the ear filled with hearing" (Ecclesiastes 1:8, NKJV). The eye was never built to stop wanting on its own. It takes something outside the eye to do that.
I used to assume contentment was a personality trait some people were simply born with, a calm gene I did not get. Paul dismantles that excuse plainly, because he was writing from a prison cell, not a garden. "Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content" (Philippians 4:11, NKJV). Learned. Not born with it, not stumbled into it by having enough money to stop worrying. He goes further, describing both directions of the swing I know well, the empty months and the flush ones. "I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need" (Philippians 4:12, NKJV). He calls that a secret, something learned over time under real pressure, not a fact he happened to be handed at birth.
What stops me short every time I read Paul's letters is how he never treats contentment as resignation, some flat acceptance of less than he wanted. He hands Timothy something sturdier than a coping mechanism. "Now godliness with contentment is great gain" (1 Timothy 6:6, NKJV). Gain. Not the absence of loss, an actual profit, the kind of profit a pressure washer or a kayak was never going to produce no matter how many times I almost bought one. And the writer of Hebrews ties that contentment to a specific promise instead of leaving it floating as a vague virtue. "Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you'" (Hebrews 13:5, NKJV). The contentment is not supposed to come from talking myself into liking what I already have. It comes from the presence of the One who is already staying, whether the cart fills up or stays empty.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once closed the gap, no matter how many nights I have argued myself out of buying the kayak. I can win that argument with my wallet and still lie there wanting something, because the want was never really about the kayak. Jesus met a woman at a well who understood a version of this ache better than she wanted to, having gone looking for something to fill her in five different marriages, and He told her plainly what any amount of drawing water never could. "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life" (John 4:13-14, NKJV). Thirst again is the whole story of my cart in four words. Every item I add promises to be the water that finally satisfies, and every one of them leaves me thirsty again by morning, because none of them was ever the actual water He meant.
He said something just as direct to a crowd chasing Him for another free meal after the miracle of the loaves. "And Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst'" (John 6:35, NKJV). I have spent so many nights feeding a hunger with things that were never bread at all, sawdust dressed up as satisfaction, gone by the time I woke up. Abiding in Him is not a discipline of wanting less. It is being fed by something that actually fills, so the appetite finally has somewhere real to land instead of circling the same empty cart every night looking for a reason to stay a little longer.
David describes what that fullness actually feels like from the inside, once he stopped looking for it in his own accomplishments. "You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Psalm 16:11, NKJV). Fullness of joy, not a longer list of possessions. Pleasures forevermore, not a flicker that fades before the tab closes. That kind of satisfaction was never going to be manufactured by my own reasoning about what I actually need versus what I merely want, because reasoning can win the argument about the kayak and still leave the deeper hunger completely untouched. Only the Spirit, abiding underneath the wanting itself, has ever actually quieted it, not by shaming me for wanting things, but by giving me something the wanting was always secretly pointing toward.
I still have forty-one items sitting in that cart tonight, and I am not going to pretend I deleted them while writing this, because that would not be honest. But I closed the laptop a little earlier than usual, and sat in the quiet instead of scrolling for a forty-second item, and something in me settled that no purchase, real or imagined, has ever managed to settle before. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly what you keep adding to your own cart hoping it will finally be enough. He has a plan for you that was never going to be completed by one more thing arriving on your doorstep, and He will never leave you to go on chasing that flicker by yourself.
---
Scriptures used (NKJV): Ecclesiastes 2:4-5; Ecclesiastes 2:11; Ecclesiastes 1:8; Philippians 4:11-12; 1 Timothy 6:6; Hebrews 13:5; John 4:13-14; John 6:35; Psalm 16:11.
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