There Your Heart Will Be Also

I just listed some items on ebay for the first time. My old computer. My wife's wedding dress. And the creme-de-la-creme, an original Nintendo that still works!


















If it all sells, we'll collect a cool 8-10 World-Vision-Kid-Months.

Thing is, I don't care about the money. It's nice to get, but I don't need it. What I really wanted to do was get-rid-of-stuff. Stuff and I have a love-hate relationship. Every time I've cleaned my room since I was a little kid, I've tossed out a ton of stuff. Couldn't wait to get rid of it. But somehow, every time I cleaned out my room, I'd find another ton of stuff to get rid of. Apparently I couldn't wait to collect it either.

Recently, Phoebe and I have been cleaning out our too-small condo in preparation to sell it and move to a less-small condo. Or house. Or island. Haven't decided yet.

In the process, we have purged as much stuff as we could, probably almost half of what we had. All of a sudden our too-small condo feels big-enough. There's room to move.

There's room to live.

I can't describe how freeing it feels. The less stuff we have, the less we feel tied down by it. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Hence the title of my blog.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Matthew 6:21

Phoebe's parents have inspired us in this. When they retired, they downsized. Big Time. They went from a big house in the 'burbs to a small condo downtown. They keep the condo fully furnished, but they are able to pack all their personal items in a couple small suitcases and vacate it in minutes. Now they travel the world, staying in places like Rome, Milan, and Dublin for months at a time, all paid for by renting out their condo back "home." There's no accumulated treasure tying their hearts down.

The rest of us have a lot of stuff, constantly feeling weighed down by it. Never able to leave for very long, always worried something will happen to it if we aren't there to care for it. I can even feel my heart's attachment to my treasures sometimes. Today, I couldn't quite bring myself to sell the golf clubs I haven't used in 2 years.

How much stuff do we have? In the US alone, storage is a $13,000,000,000/year industry. I pay $10/month for a second storage unit to keep my "treasures." You know, the treasures that are sitting in the parkade, collecting dust, rarely seen by the human eye. Stuff that someone else could probably use. Most that probably never should have been produced.

Every year, our church has a garage sale to raise funds for our teen ministries. They are off in Mexico right now with the help of those funds. It's fantastic. But isn't it also a little sad that one church can donate $4000 worth of unwanted stuff every year? If we didn't keep buying that much stuff, we'd probably save $20,000 of cash every year that we could just give to the kids instead.

We have so much stuff now that I think it's taken over our room to live. Or maybe it's just me. Perhaps I'm the only one who feels like I spend all my time trying to earn enough money to buy all the stuff I want. Maybe no one else feels like they don't have enough time for the people in their lives because they are to busy maintaining the house, servicing the car, cleaning the dishes, taking out the garbage, paying the bills for the phones and TVs...

It's our dream to one day be rid of all our stuff. As a young couple considering taking the big plunge, we know that's not going to happen soon. But it is our intent (and good idears like this should help).

Imagine a life where all your "treasure" could fit in a back pack and you could go anywhere, anytime. Close your eyes and dream of a life where the only treasures your heart was bound to were your family, your friends, your church, and your God.

Feel scary? Or liberating?

If you've still got a few minutes, and you might also enjoy watching this:



Ah, the Golden Arrow of Consumption. About as good for us as the Golden Arches.

Greg