{"id":4325,"date":"2025-01-07T09:28:44","date_gmt":"2025-01-07T14:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4325"},"modified":"2025-01-07T09:29:56","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T14:29:56","slug":"leaving-our-junk-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/07\/leaving-our-junk-behind\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving Our Junk Behind"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

Last year Mary Sue and I did what an average American will do 11.7 times during the course of their life.

We moved.

We left behind the little horse farm where we had lived for almost 19 years and moved to another little horse farm about a dozen miles up the road.

I can only say that cleaning closets, sorting clothes, packing boxes, and lugging furniture \u2013 and then doing the whole thing in reverse at the new place \u2013 is a task better undertaken by people at least 20 years younger. Exhaustion became a way of life for the better part of five months.

One of the more fascinating aspects of our experience was the phenomenon of junk.

As it turned out, we had quite a lot of it. I knew there were plenty of throwaway items gathering dust in our barn loft, and I suspected we would be making more than a few trips to Goodwill.

I ultimately contacted a local junk hauler last summer and suggested that we could probably fill an entire dump truck. It seemed like overkill when they pulled up with two trucks. But they quickly filled both. Later in the fall I once again reached out to the junk guys. \u201cOne truck should do it,\u201d I assured them. Nevertheless, they arrived with two trucks. Yet again they filled both to the brim with used-up items large and small that we clearly no longer needed, and in some cases had forgotten we even owned. \u00a0

I had no idea we were such junky people.

Jesus had something to say about the stuff we hold on to, and that inevitably fixes its hold upon us.

Consider the Parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12:15-21, where he tells the story of a farmer who hits the jackpot:

\u201cThe ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop.\u00a0He thought to himself, \u2018What shall I do?\u00a0I have no place to store my crops.\u2019 Then he said, \u2018This is what I\u2019ll do.\u00a0I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.\u00a0And I\u2019ll say to myself, \u2018You have plenty of good things laid up for many years.\u00a0Take life easy; eat, drink, and be merry.’<\/em>

\u201cBut God said to him, \u2018You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?\u2019\u00a0This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.\u201d<\/em>

According to Jesus, the object of life is amazingly simple: We are called to become rich toward God.\u00a0Anything that gets in the way of that is the worst thing that could ever happen to us.

According to Kenneth Bailey, the late Middle Eastern cultural historian, the farmer in Jesus\u2019 story has a different plan.\u00a0

\u201cThe ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop.\u201d\u00a0Right off the bat, Jesus makes it clear that this bumper crop is not primarily the result of this man investing six months of 80-hour workweeks.\u00a0The ground<\/em> yielded the grain.\u00a0And who owns the ground?\u00a0God does. Likewise, God owns the temperaments, the resources, and the brain cells that we<\/em> use to make our living.

This farmer, however, is in a self-congratulatory mood.\u00a0He says, \u201cWhat shall I<\/u><\/em> do?\u00a0I<\/u><\/em> have no place to store my<\/u><\/em> crops.\u201d\u00a0He thinks he\u2019s quite a guy, and now he has the happy problem of figuring out what to do with his unearned surpluses.\u00a0He decides to stockpile them.\u00a0He will hang on to his stuff as a hedge against future need.

Things haven\u2019t changed all that much in 2,000 years.\u00a0People still tend to think that building bigger barns is the pathway to personal security.\u00a0The primary difference is that we have so much more stuff.\u00a0

As of last October, there are 52,301 self-storage facilities in the United States.\u00a0A half century ago this industry didn\u2019t even exist.\u00a0Today it\u2019s worth about $42 billion. That\u2019s a lot of money just to make sure other people are watching our excess stuff 24\/7.

Furthermore, this man hasn\u2019t been talking to God about his next steps.\u00a0He\u2019s confidently having a conversation with himself<\/em>.\u00a0\u201cI will say to myself, \u2018You have plenty of good things laid up for many years.\u00a0Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.\u2019\u201d\u00a0

But then comes the thundering voice of God: \u201cYou fool!\u00a0You were stockpiling these gifts for the future?\u00a0The future is now.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0

Without so much as a notice in the mail, God is calling in his loans.\u00a0He says to the farmer, \u201cThis very night your life will be demanded of you.\u201d\u00a0The verb translated \u201cdemanded\u201d was part of the vocabulary of first century economics.\u00a0The farmer\u2019s life has always been on loan \u2013 something he has obviously failed to grasp.

He isn\u2019t a fool because he wants to store his crops, and certainly not because he is a person of little intelligence.\u00a0In the Bible, someone who scores 1600 on his SAT can still be a fool.\u00a0

This man is foolish because of what he thinks is going to bring him happiness.\u00a0Everyone knows how this story is going to end.\u00a0When someone dies it\u2019s not unusual to hear people ask, \u201cI wonder how much he left.\u201d\u00a0The answer is always the same.\u00a0He left it all.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>

Everybody always leaves it all. And as Mary Sue and I discovered anew last year, there\u2019s plenty of truth in the old adage, \u201cYour kids don\u2019t want your stuff.\u201d\u00a0

Make no mistake: Having money does bring comforts and a certain measure of happiness.\u00a0

It’s wonderful to have a car that doesn\u2019t routinely break down.\u00a0And it\u2019s great to be able to fill it with gas.\u00a0And it’s a relief to be able to buy some better cuts of meat at the grocery.\u00a0But such short-term joys must not be confused with finding meaning in life.

The transforming news is that you can be rich toward God.\u00a0Right now.<\/em>

Even if your bank account is empty.\u00a0Even if you’ll never have enough money to purchase your favorite professional sports team.\u00a0Even if you have enough throwaway junk to fill four dump trucks.

Don’t be a fool, Jesus says.\u00a0

Having stuff\u00a0<\/em>will never lead to the joy of simply trusting God<\/em>, which is what our souls crave most deeply.<\/em>

Which means we can all go to bed tonight knowing we are very rich people, indeed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Last year Mary Sue and I did what an average American will do 11.7 times during the course of their life. We moved. We left behind the little horse farm where we had lived for almost 19 years and moved to another little horse farm about a dozen miles up the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[850,849],"class_list":["post-4325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-possessions","tag-riches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4325"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4328,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4325\/revisions\/4328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}