John 14:1-6
In my house, there aren’t many rooms though I like to tell
people that there are more than there really are. If you need to, you can stay in my house for
a day or two as long as you remember that it is my house and you have to act
according to my rules. Everything in my
house is mine and I enjoy knowing that I have all of this stuff there and that
I have more than someone else. I depend
upon it to make me happy. If you do need
to come to my house, I probably won’t be able to help you get there. I will be too busy. If you don’t know the way, don’t worry. There are many ways on MapQuest that you can
find that will take you to my house. Isn’t
it amazing how all those roads will lead to the road on which my house is?
How many of us are this possessive? I know I have way too much stuff and yet I
always keep getting more. At one point,
almost every time I went shopping, I got a book and I would finish reading it
before the day was up. Now, this isn’t
necessarily a bad thing that I like to read that much but I had way too many
books! I eventually donated most of them
to my church and there were almost ten boxes full that I sent there! And that doesn’t count the books that I loved
and kept! I had way too many books and
still have way too many books. I have
way too much stuff in general. I need to
go through it, again, and get rid of most of it. I don’t use it. I don’t need it. Most of it is kept on the “Just in Case I
want to Use it Again” basis. Let me just
tell you, I won’t be using it again.
But, we weren’t called to be possessive of our stuff. Remember what the Bible says? Repeatedly it says to give to the poor. In the New Testament, it even suggests to sell
all of our stuff and give the proceeds to the poor. When I think about it, this actually isn’t
such a bad idea. Doing that, I could get
rid of all the junk that there is no point in me keeping. My room will be actually clean for once with
most of the excess junk being gone. But
am I going to do that? I like my
stuff. I like the security that it gives
me. I like the knowledge that it is
right there if I ever need it. Why would
I want to give it up?
Now, when it comes down to it, it is not that easy to sell
everything we own and give to the poor.
Or maybe easy isn’t the right road.
Perhaps smart is the right word to use.
If we do that now a days, not only will be in need of something and have
to depend upon someone to give it, we may lose our jobs and be one of the poor
in actuality. But, how hard is it for us
to not buy that book every time that we go out?
Let’s say even that we bought the super cheap, on sale, no-one-else-wants-to-buy-it-and-it’s-been-sitting-here-for-months-if-not-years
books so that we only spent a couple of dollars on the books so that it added
up to just over a hundred dollars at the end of a year. Do you know how much groceries we could buy
with a hundred dollars? I’m sure that
the food pantry would be thrilled with a hundred dollars’ worth of canned
goods. And not even books could
apply. That coffee you buy from
Starbucks every morning, that vending machine at work that you get a pack of
skittles from every other day, the claw game that you play at least once every
time that you see it, anything really that we spend money regularly on that’s
more of an indulgence than a need. While
that money may not add up to much in our lives and barely make our budget list,
it could mean so much more in the lives of the needy. So why can’t we just help them? Why is it the only time that we donate to a
cause is when they come knocking on our doors?
I’ve stopped buying that book. Can
you stop buying your indulgence?
(749 words)
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