Yes, kids, it’s Sunday again. Enjoy the words on the screen!
Luke 12:13-21; Colossians 3:1-11; Psalm 49:1-12; Ecclesiastes 1:2,12-14,2:18-23
If you ever want a way to find out who your true friends are, I think I’ve found a sure fire method. It’s proved nearly 100% effective over the years. Ready for it? Ask for help moving. It’s that simple. You always know who your friends really are because they’ll show up to help you move. There was even a Seinfeld episode about it, where it’s a big step in a friendship to ask for help moving. That just makes me wonder: why do people always not want to help someone move? Well it’s fairly simple. Most of us have way too much stuff.
We like our stuff. There’s at least 3 shows on TV about people who have unhealthy amounts of stuff. We all have boxes of random stuff in our basements or attics that we keep even though we don’t really know why we do. We have Christmas Stuff, special dinner stuff, computer stuff, hunting stuff. There’s all these different kinds of stuff, and we all have something.
Our culture likes to tell us, “He who dies with the most toys wins!” We want to have stuff, and then when that stuff wears out we get better stuff, and better stuff, until, in some cases, we have to get a new house to hold all our stuff. Even I’ll be the first to admit that I have some really random things I’ve held on to over the years, that I really should get rid of. But I don’t want to. I like that stuff.
Scripture gives us a different perspective on things. All four of our lessons, talk about the dangers of stuff. In summary, “He who dies with the most toys still dies”. Our gospel is the parable of a rich man who had a lot of stuff. He realized that he didn’t have big enough barns to put his crops in, and so opted to tear them all down and build new ones, so that he had plenty of room to store his stuff. That way, he thought, he could just sit back, relax, and enjoy retirement. Unfortunately, as the man was saying that, God stepped in and said, “Fool! You’re going to die tonight, and all your stuff isn’t going to help you!” That man trusted in his stuff and not in God.
That’s the real danger of having stuff. We start to rely on ourselves for our provision instead of on God. That’s actually the very next thing that happens in the Gospel; Jesus tells the disciples not to worry about what to eat and drink, but instead trust God to provide.
Of course, Jesus is a lot less harsh than the writer of Ecclesiates. “Meaningless, Meaningless, Utterly Meaningless, Everything is Meaningless.” The only thing that has any meaning is to seek after God. The book ends, “Fear God and keep his commandments.” That is it. Curiously enough, that’s the same thing that Jesus said, “Love God and love your neighbor.” And yet we keep letting our stuff get in the way.
Part of our sinful nature is to do all we can to rely on ourselves instead of on God. We want to say “I did it myself”. We like to be able to assert that we don’t need help from anyone. But that isn’t how we were created, and it isn’t good for us. We were created to rely on God for the knowledge of good and evil, but instead we decided to take that responsibility on ourselves. We were created to be in a relationship with God, submitting to His will, not trying to circumvent it.
When it really comes down to it, as humans we don’t like to give up that control. We don’t like to admit that someone else’s way is better than our own. But when we do submit to God – when we trust Him enough to let him lead us – things tend to go a lot better. We don’t have to worry anymore about all the stressors in life. We don’t have to worry about money, or food, or whatever, because we know that God is taking care of us.
Now all this is easier said than done. We are both saints and sinners, right? The saint in us seeks after God to provide for everything we need. It prays, “Give us this day our daily bread”. But the sinner in us says, “I’m going to make my own bread thank you very much.” It’s a constant fight within us. But I challenge you to keep fighting that fight, and seeking not to focus on our stuff but instead to look to God for support.