After four months of being away at school, I returned home to find our home practically refurnished.
We got new furniture. We got new mattresses. We got new pillows. We got new. Stuff.
And I can't help but ask myself how we could be okay with this. How can we allow our comfort to increase while the majority of the world is groaning with pain and poverty? It's the same old story, the same old problem, and it only gets worse the more we allow this stuff to enter into our lives, making it easier and easier to ignore those who are empty and dispossessed. As Shane Claiborne quotes, "how can we worship a homeless man on sunday and ignore one on monday?" The kind of service to the poor that Jesus talks about is more than just placing a bill into the offering. It's offering our entire lives to the One who became poor himself in order to serve even the least of us. It's ideally about becoming poor with Him. But for most of us this is a far off extreme.
At a conference I just returned from, Claiborne mentioned that if there are any possessions in this world we cannot bear to part with, they are not our possessions, but we are their possessions.
And even if we can't follow Christ's injunction to the rich man to "sell your possessions and give to the poor," we can atleast afford to live a little simpler. Do we really need five computers and 7 televisions? Do we really need so much food that we throw out expired groceries every week? Do we really need comfortable new pillows and mattresses when we are spoiled enough to even have beds to sleep on?
This past summer while reading through Psalm 23 I had in my mind a vision of God pulling me away from it all. Beside me was a pile of "stuff" so big that I could not see over it- everything material in my life that I was in bondage to. Then far to my right was Jesus, beckoning me to come, dance, run through the garden with him. I was caught in between, and I couldn't let my things go as I clung to them fearfully. But the more I repeated those words, The Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want, the more I could feel my strength increasing and enabling me to separate myself from the pile. I walked strenuously as if a rubber band were anchored to the pile and wrapped around my waste- with each step the tension increased, tempting me to let it snap me all the way back to where I had been, alone with my stuff. But once I got close enough to touch Jesus' hand, I was pulled out. I was freed.
We got new furniture. We got new mattresses. We got new pillows. We got new. Stuff.
And I can't help but ask myself how we could be okay with this. How can we allow our comfort to increase while the majority of the world is groaning with pain and poverty? It's the same old story, the same old problem, and it only gets worse the more we allow this stuff to enter into our lives, making it easier and easier to ignore those who are empty and dispossessed. As Shane Claiborne quotes, "how can we worship a homeless man on sunday and ignore one on monday?" The kind of service to the poor that Jesus talks about is more than just placing a bill into the offering. It's offering our entire lives to the One who became poor himself in order to serve even the least of us. It's ideally about becoming poor with Him. But for most of us this is a far off extreme.
At a conference I just returned from, Claiborne mentioned that if there are any possessions in this world we cannot bear to part with, they are not our possessions, but we are their possessions.
And even if we can't follow Christ's injunction to the rich man to "sell your possessions and give to the poor," we can atleast afford to live a little simpler. Do we really need five computers and 7 televisions? Do we really need so much food that we throw out expired groceries every week? Do we really need comfortable new pillows and mattresses when we are spoiled enough to even have beds to sleep on?
This past summer while reading through Psalm 23 I had in my mind a vision of God pulling me away from it all. Beside me was a pile of "stuff" so big that I could not see over it- everything material in my life that I was in bondage to. Then far to my right was Jesus, beckoning me to come, dance, run through the garden with him. I was caught in between, and I couldn't let my things go as I clung to them fearfully. But the more I repeated those words, The Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want, the more I could feel my strength increasing and enabling me to separate myself from the pile. I walked strenuously as if a rubber band were anchored to the pile and wrapped around my waste- with each step the tension increased, tempting me to let it snap me all the way back to where I had been, alone with my stuff. But once I got close enough to touch Jesus' hand, I was pulled out. I was freed.
He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters.
What could be better than that picture? Who needs all this stuff? We can't bring it with us to where He's calling us to go. He invites, but we must respond with action, and not just the nodding of our heads. It's time to do some cleaning out.
Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." Matthew 19:21
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