How the soaring cost of living can help us refocus

Whatever question they get asked, we have witnessed politicians on every side swiftly segue onto the subject of the cost of living.

It is an issue which affects all but the most privileged of the voting public, though it also serves to dodge difficult questions on other subjects.

No doubt all of us are impacted by price rises. We have watched the numbers fly up and up at the fuel pump. We have tried not to take too sharp an intake of breath when we are presented with the bill at the bar, restaurant or takeaway. We have found ourselves tracking the weekly increase at the supermarket till. We are changing our habits, spending less on luxuries and more on essentials. Our holidays, if we have managed to get away, are more modest.

While the cost of living is simply the sum of monthly expenses, it quietly defers to maintaining a certain standard of living. Monitoring the cost of living entails monitoring the prices of a standard list of items. And looking down this list is very revealing. There are the obvious consumables like bread, dairy products, meat, fruit and vegetables. Transport costs survey everything from the cost of a bus ticket to the cost of a new family car. Utilities costs include Wi-Fi, and there is a section on sports and leisure that includes gym membership, tennis court hire and the price of a cinema ticket.

We have a sense of what life should be like that has been constantly improving and continues to improve. One hundred years ago, central heating was just starting to be introduced into luxury houses and by the 1930s the same high-class homes also possessed a telephone. As our quality of life improves, we simply aspire to the next level. With the advent of mobile internet, we now want superfast mobile internet, and, of course, we can control our central heating from our phones.

Cost of living is strongly connected to an expected quality of life, which is strongly connected to the place we live in. It may be much cheaper to live in some places, but the quality of life is much lower. The war that has propagated the energy crisis has also generated a refugee crisis and brought together radically different perspectives, sometimes under the same roof. While we expect modern life to be affordable, refugees give up everything for basic freedom and survival. As they settle, however, those aspirations will change too. We will always aspire to something better.

Sinful hearts twist aspirations into entitlement, greed and ethical blindness, but there is a good foundation that lies behind high hopes. There is something in us that longs for something better, and that innate expectation is from God. We are designed for something more; we bear the image of the Creator who made us to reflect His eternal glory.

Not only do we have an innate sense of expectation for what life should be like, we also have an innate sense of expectation for someone to provide it and sustain it. Dissatisfaction often targets leaders and rulers who always, eventually, fall short – because they are fallen human beings just like the rest of us.

Dissatisfaction with the cost of living and with the quality of our lives is to be expected, but only God can provide. Common grace bears witness to the greater glory we were created for, and to what we have lost through our wilful rebellion against the One who created us. There is a price to pay to restore us to the life we are made to live, a cost we could never afford, but thank God for our redemption by our Lord Jesus Christ.