The Importance of Stuff

I did not preach last Sunday.  The reason I did not preach is that I was in Armour, where my parents live in a nursing home.  Wanda and I have been boxing up the stuff that was in their basement.  They’ve had water in their basement, and it’s a continuing problem.  There’s a moldy smell, which probably means there’s mold there, so the basement has to be re-done.  Which means, of course, that we need to get all the stuff out of the basement so the construction guys can do their work.

The amount of stuff a person accumulates over the course of a lifetime is amazing.  It’s even more amazing, of course, if you’re the sort of person who never wants to throw anything away.  But all of us do this to one extent or another.  We all accumulate an awful lot of stuff.  I’ve done it, too.  Wanda and I must have thrown out fifty garbage bags of stuff when we moved here from North Sioux City six and a half years ago, but we still have tons of stuff.  We should get busy throwing it out, but we probably won’t.  It will probably stay right where it is until someday we move again, whether that’s through re-appointment or retirement.

Human beings place a high value on stuff.  I’m not criticizing that.  I’m just stating a fact.  Some of you reading this have had to move from your house into an apartment or a nursing home.  When you did, you had to dispose of a lot of stuff.  And I’m sure that was hard.  Because in many cases, stuff is not just stuff.  It’s important to us.  Some of it is stuff we need.  Some of it is stuff that we don’t strictly need, but stuff that makes our lives easier or more enjoyable.  And some of it is stuff that has meaning to us.  We get sentimental over stuff, because stuff leads to memories, and memories are important to us.

There’s nothing wrong with having stuff.  Probably all of us have more stuff than, strictly speaking, we need, but it’s not for me to say how much stuff you ought to have.  That’s up to you, or at least it’s between you and God.

There’s nothing wrong with having stuff, but there can be when our stuff becomes too important to us.  The Bible tells us “Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.”  (Matthew 6:21).  If stuff is what we treasure, then our heart will be with our stuff.  Instead of us owning our stuff, our stuff starts to own us.  That’s not good.  It’s not good for our heart to be with our stuff.  Our heart needs to be with God.

So this week, let’s all think of our relationship with our stuff.  Do we own our stuff?  Or does our stuff own us?  If it’s the latter, let’s doing something about that.  Let’s break the chains that bind us to our stuff.  Let’s make sure our hearts are with God.