Scott's Thoughts

Organizing our "stuff"

Yesterday I tackled a small project that had been hanging over my head for some time - cleaning out our garage. While I was looking for places to put things, I remembered something a great uncle had told me several years ago. That is, much a man's life is spent organizing all his stuff. A simple, common sense observation but one that has proven true again and again in my own experience. When he told me this, I had just returned from living two years in Japan and was getting ready to go to seminary. As a young, single man with no permanent home I hadn't accumulated many things. In fact, I was able to pack virtually all my worldly possessions into the back of a Chevy Blazer, which I did as I took off from Montana and drove across the country to seminary in Philadelphia. Three years, and a wife, and one child later, the stuff had increased exponentially. When we moved, we needed a small U-Haul truck. A year and a half later, plus one more child, it took the biggest truck U-Haul offers to move all of our things to Oklahoma.

Since then, much time and mental energy has been spent figuring out how to fit all our stuff into our 3-bedroom home. It's not that we have alot of things. On the contrary, we probably have fewer possessions than a typical family of our size. But here in Oklahama, they don't build basements for houses (although here we are in the heart of tornado country!!). So, unless we rent some kind of storage facility, we have to jam every possible nook and cranny with stuff. Thankfully, I've inherited some good genes in this regard - my father has been gifted with the ability to pack alot in a small place. I think if he tried he could move a entire department store with just a minivan.

We are loaded with things (loaded down?); they're mainly not expensive, and very few are luxury items. For us, taking on a spartan lifestyle is neither the practical nor wise thing to do. It seems we need most of it to maintain a "normal" lifestyle. My uncle was right - much of a man's life is spent in packing, moving, storing, organizing, unpacking, paring down, and generally overseeing all his stuff.

"One's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions" (Luke 12:15). Jesus is of course warning us from seeking our lives in our stuff. But maybe there is a promise here, as well?