Monday 30th March - Stuff

DAILY BYTE

[Today’s devotions have been adapted from John Ortberg’s book – ‘When the game is over it all goes back in the box.’]

It’s only stuff.

We all have stuff. We see it, want it, buy it, display it, insure it, and compare it with other people’s stuff. We talk about whether or not they have too much stuff; we envy or pass judgement on other people’s collections of stuff. We collect our own little pile. We imagine that if that pile got big enough, we would feel successful or secure.

That’s how you keep score in Monopoly, and that’s how our culture generally keeps score as well.

You get a house, then you have to get stuff to put in it. You keep getting more stuff, and you need a bigger house. A house, said comedian George Carlin, is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. Some people have actually survived without owning one. Jesus, for instance.

Some people have a gift for acquiring stuff. Not long ago I took my daughter to a place called Hearst Castle. William Randolph Hearst was a “stuffaholic.” He had 3, 500-year-old Egyptian statues, medieval Flemish tapestries, and centuries-old hand-carved ceilings, and some of the greatest works of art of all time, most of which came from Sweden.

He built a house of 72,000 square feet to put his stuff in. He acquired property for his house: 265,000 acres: he originally owned fifty miles of California coastline. He collected stuff for eighty-eight years. Then you know what he did?

He died. That was shortsighted.

Now people go through Hearst’s house by the thousands. They all say the same thing: “Wow, he sure had a lot of stuff.”

People go through life, get stuff, and then they die, leaving all their stuff behind. What happens to it? The kids argue over it. The kids – who haven’t died yet, who are really just pre-dead people – to over to their parent’s house. They pick through their parents’ old stuff like vultures, deciding which stuff they want to take to their houses. They say to themselves, “Now this is my stuff.” Then they die – and some new vultures come for it. People come and go. Nations go to war over stuff, families are split apart because of stuff. Husbands and wives argue more about stuff than any other single issue. Prisons are full of street thugs and CEOs who committed crimes to acquire it.

Why? It’s only stuff. Houses and hotels may be the crowning jewels in Monopoly. But the moment the game ends they go back in the box. So it is with all our stuff.

This week’s devotions are focussed on the relationship we have with our stuff because it so profoundly impacts our spirituality. This was one of Jesus most consistent and emphatic messages – that our relationship with our stuff deeply affects our relationship with God!

PRAY AS YOU GO

Gracious and Giving God, help us to understand how drastically the way we view our ‘stuff’ – the way we relate to possessions and money and more profoundly impacts our spirituality. Pray bring us into a balanced relationship with material possessions – a balance that is brought about by our primary relationship with you. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Luke 12:15

Then Jesus said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a person’s life does not consist in the abundance of their possessions."