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It’s Groundhog Day 2025 and frankly when I think of Groundhog Day, I think of the classic movie from 1993 staring Bill Murray. As most of you know the movie is about a cynical TV weatherman who finds himself reliving the same day over and over again when he goes on location to the small town of Punxsutawney to film a report about their annual Groundhog Day. His predicament drives him to distraction, until he sees a way of turning the situation to his advantage.
I used to live in this “deja vu all over again” scenario for years. Maybe you can relate. For too long in my quest for happiness and contentment, I found myself in a never ending cycle of failure from which I couldn’t escape.
After I choose to trust in Christ as Savior and LORD, and I started “walking” with him, I eventually figured out I was stuck because I had been looking for help and escape in all the wrong places. Recently I read this page from my favorite devotional, New Morning Mercies by Paul David Tripp:
I wish I could say that I never look for life where it can’t be found, but the temptation to do this still haunts me. As much as we all know that there is only one true God, we still hunt for GOD-replacements. We all still tend to look horizontally for what we will only ever find vertically. There are times when we ask creation to be our Savior:
-We attach our identity to the respect of another.
-We draw too much of our sense of well-being from our physical appearance.
-We think material possessions have the power to make us happy.
-We attach our meaning and purpose to our achievements.
-We ask our jobs to make us content.
-We try to base our identity on our children.
-We ask our spouses to make us happy
-We look to food and drink to satisfy and calm us.
-We continually say,” If I only had______, then my life would be_____.
-We attach our identity to the luxury of our cars or the affluence of our neighborhoods.
The list is really endless. There is nothing in creation that you can’t try to turn into your personal messiah, but it never, ever works.The creation can never give you what the Creator alone can. It makes no sense at all to desperately look for what you have already been given by your Savior.
All the good and glorious created things that God puts in our lives are things he has designed and placed there to point us to the only place where life can ever be found — in him. All created things are signs that point us to what can be found in him. You know this from driving around or from taking a trip: a sign points you to a thing, but the sign is not the thing. Creation points us to the Creator, but it can never give us what the Creator can give. All good situations, locations, possessions, relationships, achievements, and natural beauties of this physical world are wonderful blessings from the hand of God, but they have no ability to give you the one thing that your heart desperately desires —life. Jesus said it this way: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). With these words, he ends our need to search, He is life, so there is no need to look for it anywhere else.
How about you? Are you stuck in “Groundhog Day”? Maybe you’re stuck, like I was, by looking for love, contentment and fulfillment in all the wrong places?
John Muckerman
FATC Inspiration and Leadership Studies Lead
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