Friday, December 16, 2011

More Stuff

Christmas is a wonderful time of year. For me, I have realized it is so much more than one day. It is at least a month! It's the one time of year people step out of their narrow focus of Me-World and try to share joy.
I'm also really feeling convicted lately about the lengths of our joy sharing. We aren't going far enough. We are getting so caught up with giving STUFF to each other (seriously, how many of us already have too much stuff?) that we are not helping the truly helpless. I even catch myself running through the mall getting last minute gifts, walking past the World Vision booth with it's orange-hatted volunteers, "too busy" or "too on budget" to stop. Horrible. I feel so convicted about this. If we put all of our billions of dollars we spend buying more stuff towards the truly needed, think about how the world would change.

A good article that got me thinking is here. Read it in it's entirety or don't read it at all. It's not that long.

I read a quote once (I can't find it now) and it was along the lines of, "If I stop buying things today, I could never possibly use up all the stuff I have right now." If you never bought another piece of clothing, could you wear out your clothes, all of them, until they were unwearable? Sheesh we have our priorities so messed up here, and it seems almost impossible to get out of the mindset of entitlement.

Here's to working on a change of heart, when the other part of me is thinking that I don't want to think about it!!