A week ago today the moving truck pulled up to our home in Virginia and all our worldly possessions were loaded onto it for the the move to Minnesota. Today all that "stuff" is sitting in boxes or stacked in the garage and basement of my in-laws as we wait to get into our new home on May 27th.
When I moved to the United States in 1992 I brought with me all my worldly possessions, two suitcases and one box. Three years later when I moved into the apartment that would be the first home Jenny and I would share I managed to get all my possessions in one car load and that car was Geo Metro! My how times have changed. We still don't have a lot as the average US home move averages 15,000lbs of stuff and ours topped out at 11,000lbs but its still a lot of stuff.
One of my children tried to tell me how we needed all this stuff and when I tried to explain that it was almost all luxury she wasn't convinced. But luxury it is virtually nothing we moved was a necessity to living and some of what we moved won't have a place in our new 2200 square foot house!
Tonight I'm going to be moving some 25 boxes of books into my new office space! There are pastors in this world who don't even have a complete copy of the Bible.
I live a life of luxury. I'm writing this as I sip on a latte at Caribou Coffee. I spent more on the coffee than one billion people make in four days of work!
So what's at stake here? Everything is at stake here. Luxury can lead to complacency and half-hearted devotion to God (check out the Church in Laodicea). It can lead to apathy and a sense of entitlement, but God hasn't blessed us because we are good (we are all broken) but rather, if we are blessed with material resources, it is to be a blessing to others.
How much do you need?
How can you be a blessing to others?
KIVA
World Vision
International Justice Mission
Amnesty International
These are just a couple of places to get started.
