11-28-21 Less Stuff
Quote: “For the longest time, I though I needed to be more organized. Now I know I just needed less stuff.”
It’s that time of year where we start thinking back on the past year, but also start looking forward to the next year to come. A time to reflect back and make plans for the future. Always on my “to do list” is to get our house more organized and purge the things we no longer need. It is an overwhelming feeling to start such a monumental task such as this… but wow does it feel good when we downsize.
I affectionally call our basement an “organized chaos” of souvenirs and suitcases, with nerf gun bullets covering most of it. I have a hard time throwing things away because they hold such great memories. I love reliving special moments and milestones. But over time, all that stuff becomes… well, just stuff.
There is nothing wrong with saving and holding onto things. But we must always keep in focus our real purpose for being here. For Christians, this is just one stage of the game. The best is yet to come! We have another life ahead of us. We are just passing through this current life and we cannot take one thing with us. I heard someone say once, There’s a reason you never see a U-haul at a funeral! This is so true. We aren’t here just to collect and accumulate things.
The Bible talks about this in Matthew 6:19. It says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.” This is such a great reminder for us! Everything we have here is just on loan to us. We may own a home or vehicle but none of it actually belongs to us. We are just here for a little while, renting space and air until our time on earth is done.
That’s why we must be careful how we invest our time, talent, and treasures. How we spend our money and what we put on our schedule is a pretty good indication of what we find most important. As if to drive this point home, Jesus says two verses later, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
What drives your finances and calendars most? Where is your heart focused?
One thing I want our family to do better with next year is to be more intentional about those 3 Ts – how we spend our time, how we use the talents God has given us, and how we spend our treasures (money). We can always do better. We can plan better. We can make better decisions. We can choose to invest in relationships rather than accumulating more things that will eventually just rot and rust and fade away. We can definitely be more intentional.
For us, I know we collect and hold onto too much stuff. There is a fine balance between what we need and what we want. We live with abundantly more than we could ever need. That’s why our family tries to take a yearly mission trip to a country that is much different than our own – to keep our hearts with the right perspective…to remind us of what is truly important in life. The poorest people on the planet may not have a lot of things but the love and joy they have just being in each other’s presence has taught our family so much about what is really important in life.
I invite each of us to take an inventory of our houses and hearts this next month. I pray that we will choose to be a little more intentional with how we live our life. I think that’s the best thing way we can say “Thank you” to the one who gave it all to us in the first place.
