He who dies with the most toys...

You know how sometimes how you go back to the home you grew up in and uncover a part of yourself? That's what happened to me when we visited my Dad this past weekend.

I sincerely love and admire my Dad. I attribute a great deal of what is good about the man I am today to what I learned from him. But the man is not without his faults. For instance...

My Dad is a Pack Rat

You know what I'm talking about...he stores stuff everywhere. The dining room table, kitchen table and kitchen counter are so overflowing with papers that you have to clear a path every time you want to eat. Both my brother's and my old bedrooms are chock full of boxes and random loose items. The TV/computer room is so full that there's barely a path to the easy chair. The 2-car garage is a 0-car garage. And the barn...we won't even go there.

I, on the other hand, have an aversion to great piles of stuff. I'm not a clean person by any means, but there is a "breaking point" to how much stuff piling up that I can handle. When I make the time to go through and get rid of things, to make my life simpler and cleaner, I get this amazing feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction.

As I walked through my Dad's house, this sickening feeling hit me:

One day my father is going to die...

...and I'm going to have to clean all this up.

Visions of bulldozers shoving stuff out the second-story windows danced through my mind.

That night, we attended a Worship concert by a man named Paul Wilbur (www.wilburministries.com). Paul is a Messianic Jew who has a heart for reaching the nations with the word of Yeshua (Jesus). He told us the story of his recent trip to Zambia, Africa.

Zambia is one of the poorest countries in the world. Most of the people have, quite literally, nothing. No shelter, no food...and certainly no big piles of stuff. On top of that, they have one of the highest rates of HIV/Aids in the world.

The average life expectancy is 40.

Let that fact float around in your head for a little while.

As Paul told this story and led us through an incredible time of worship, I couldn't help but think of the contrasts. We live in the richest country in the world. We say we have money problems, but are living on literal piles of stuff that represents more money than many people in the world will ever see. We have so much stuff that we don't even have the time to manage it all. We keep meaning to get rid of things, to fix things, to store things in different places, but can never quite find the time. There's a word for that:

Slavery

We are slaves to our stuff.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says this:

"You say, 'I am allowed to do anything' - but not everything is good for you. And even though 'I am allowed to do anything,' I must not become a slave to anything." (I Cor 6:12, NLT)

The contrast I draw above should appeal to your sense of justice, but it shouldn't make you feel guilty. There's nothing wrong with owning stuff. The problem is when we allow our stuff to own us.

So what's that look like in your life? In what ways does your stuff own you? What could you do to simplify, to cut back?

This week we're going to be talking about ways we can serve our Community. Lisa has a great idea she's going to share about how we can take all that stuff we all have piling up and give it to real people with real needs. I encourage you to pray about how you can contribute to this. It's not just about helping others, it's also about helping ourselves.

John