I had coffee with a friend who told me he and his wife are thinking of moving closer to their children now living in another state. But they are less than eager because they have so much stuff. Last year I helped my parents move from their large house to an assisted care apartment. It was hard to know what to do with the stuff they wouldn’t need anymore. The personal storage industry is booming as Empty Nesters struggle to downsize without throwing away their stuff.
Author Annie Leonard has just published a book called “The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet.” I found her quote worth sharing: “We work more hours than folks in almost any other country in the world, and two of our main activities are TV watching and shopping. So we go to work, come home exhausted, and plop down in front of the TV. Commercials tell us we need new stuff, so we go shopping and in order to pay for it all, we have to work even more.” Sound familiar?
Jesus spoke of the problem of accumulating “stuff,” graciously referring to it as our “treasures.” He said "Don't store up treasures here on earth, where they can be eaten by moths and get rusty, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where they will never become moth-eaten or rusty and where they will be safe from thieves.” (Mat. 6:19-20) Then He really drives home the point: “Wherever your treasure is, there your heart and thoughts will also be.” (Mat. 6:21) Maybe our storage units and garages as are telling us more about hearts than we want to admit.
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