It’s the Money or Your Life ...But You Can’t Have Both.

Consumerism and materialism are leaving us restless and resentful.  Yeah, you too.  Author Philip Yancey said, “Many people in societies advanced in technology go about their daily lives assuming God does not exist.  They stop short at the world that can be reduced and analyzed, their ears sealed against rumors of another world.  As Tolstoy said, ‘materialists mistake what limits life for life itself.’”

I think it’s enlightening in an Age seemingly unable to look beyond itself— either to learn from the past or live in light of Eternity— to read the final thoughts in Mark’s account of Jesus’ ‘come to Me meeting’ with the rich young ruler.  Peter say’s to Jesus in 10:28, “We have left everything to follow you!”  To which Jesus replies, “I tell you the Truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for Me and the Gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present Age ...and in the Age to Come, Eternal Life.  But many who are first [and believe they deserve to be] will be last, and the last [who believe they deserve to be also, will be] first,” vv. 29-31.

The cancer of consumerism is eating us alive.  So if consumerism has made you crazy and materialism left its angry mark, maybe it’s time to lift some of this burden and unload the unnecessary.  If you’ve got a car you don’t drive, a TV you don’t watch, a computer you don’t touch, or toys that take time, energy, and effort which could be put to better use elsewhere, somebody in the Body probably needs what you have.  If you don’t want to sell it, then give it away in grace.  Don’t let what you own in the end own you.  Because it will, if you don’t watch it.  If you don’t live with your eyes wide open, awake to the fact the world can take you out by your toys, they will do just that.  You may end up eliminating some things which are nice because you realize they’re unnecessary.  The truth is they may be standing like a silent wall between you and a deepening of your relationships, a strengthening of your marriage, an enhancement of your intimacy with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  And if so, they need to go.

What do we do?  We simplify, then simplify some more.  We clear away the clutter of all that is distracting us from desiring our King over all of Creation.  Soviet dissident and combatant of communism Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once wrote,

Do not pursue what is illusory.  All that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and is confiscated in the fell of night.  Live with the steady superiority over life.  Don’t be afraid of misfortune.  Do not yearn after happiness.  It is, after all, all the same.  The bitter doesn’t last forever.  And the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.  It is enough if you don’t freeze in the cold.  And if thirst and hunger don’t claw at your insides, if your back isn’t broken, if your feet can walk and your arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom… whom should you envy?

Whom indeed?  The haunting words of Henry Thoreau echo my belief in the Three Ds of the Cosmic System {distractions, deceptions, and destructions}: “Our life is frittered away by detail,” he wrote, “simplify, simplify.”  Amen.  May we begin this very moment, in the strength of the Spirit of God, to do this very thing.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
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