Downsizing

Welcome to 2013!

About 2 years ago, my lovely wife Janice and I downsized our housing. We had the traditional 2500-square-foot, 3-bedroom home with a 1000-square-foot unfinished basement that stored mostly junk… I mean, we could have run a season of Storage Wars in our basement! So, we bought a townhouse, 10 units over from my Mom, and let someone else do our yard work for us, leaving us with the challenge of what to do with all of this unnecessary stuff; all that stuff that we must have seen some value in, or else why did we keep it?

Well, Janice saw some value – we lived in that house for 7 years and there were actual boxes that had not been unpacked, along with a broken ping-pong table that one day I was (supposedly) going to repair. Like that was going to happen! 

So, choices had to be made, furniture given away, and boxes of stuff had to go.

I wonder if our walk with God can, on occasion, use this same kind of “clearing out” of the basement. I mean, just how much baggage have we gathered that common sense says, “Toss it out, why are you hanging on to that?” What are the priorities, and more importantly, what are the distractions that so easily come to us in this world? How do we avoid the kind of modern idolatry that is so prevalent in our lives, recognizing that for most of us, this will not involve worshiping false Gods. Our idolatry is much more subtle.

Money – Do not store up for yourselves treasures on this earth….. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6: 19-21

The number-one cause of distraction in our lives is often our money and our “stuff”: our physical possessions. More often than not, we are seeking to answer the question of “How am I going to get more money so that I can buy more stuff?” Now, personally, I like "stuff" as much as anyone. I can often be found in front of my 65-inch Samsung Idol watching some kind of sporting event. However, when our stuff becomes more important to us than God or the people in our lives, it is likely stuff that needs to be dealt with.

We are by nature easily distracted from the things that are really the best for us. It’s actually very easy to get off of a first-love relationship with God, and instead focus on things that at first glance are seemingly not a problem. Yet it is those necessary things, and those subtle things, that more often than not interfere with our walk with God.

So maybe that’s where the downsizing needs to take place in 2013 – not the obvious stuff, but the subtle stuff that we have stacked up in our spiritual basements that have prevented us from ‘seeking first His Kingdom and his righteousness, and all of these things will be given to you as well.” (Matt 6:33)

- Bill Nixon,  Director of Public Education, The Mustard Seed
@billbytheminute