OK, so I’m not going to lie. Moving can be a pain, especially when you have a family. This is the fifth time we have moved in our 11 years of marriage, and though some of those moves have been local, I don’t think it makes it any easeir. I’m believing the next time we move it will be into a house (that could mean a condo) here in Cambridge.
Although we are fairly minimalist, the amount of stuff one accumulates seems to multiply. When we moved from Rochester, NY to Cambridge, MA we had to downsize bigtime. We moved from a four bedroom house to a two bedroom apartment in the city. Now we are moving from that two bedroom apartment to a three bedroom apartment on the other side of Cambridge, and we are downsizing again – intentionally. We have an extra bedroom in our new place, but because I need an office, the space is about the same size. In the old apartment, we converted part of the basement into an office.
I find something freeing about living simply. The older I get, the less I care about stuff. I have no idea where this quote came from but I really like it, don’t let your upkeep be your downfall. Do we really need more stuff? Is that what’s really important in life? Jesus words ring true, for where your treasure is there your heart will be also (Matt. 6:21). I’m not against having nice things, but at what point do we have enough? I like the stories of some of the preachers of old (John Wesley, George Meuller, Hudson Taylor) who figured out what they needed to live and anything that came in above and beyond that that, they gave to God’s work. Their goal was to die with nothing because they gave it all away before the end of their life. Now that’s placing your treasure and your heart in God’s kingdom!
I want our giving to continually increase over the course of our life. Most people make more than a million dollars in the course of their life time, but I wonder what would happen if we would set a goal to give a million dollars to God’s work over the course of our lifetime? What if we stopped setting GETTING goals and started setting GIVING goals (Mark Batterson)?
How about you: is your treasure and your heart in God’s kingdom and God’s work or in your stuff?
