Their silver and their gold will not be able to rescue them on the day of the Lord’s wrath. The whole earth will be consumed by the fire of His jealousy. For He will make a complete, yes, a horrifying end of all the inhabitants of the earth. – Zephaniah 1:18
Through the course of our life and ministry, my wife and I seem to have repeatedly experienced what I like to call “stuff-cycling.” When we began our life together, we soon began to accumulate “stuff” and it is safe to say that this continued until I went into vocational ministry, which led us to dump some of the “stuff” we had accumulated. Of course, over time we would accumulate more stuff, but then need to dump it again when we relocated.
This began the cycle of accumulate, dump, accumulate, dump, accumulate … you get the picture. With each succeeding cycle, it seemed that the “box” (or place) where we kept our stuff got smaller, too, and by the time we returned from Africa in 2011 all our stuff fit into an 8 x 8 x 4 ft. box! Now that we have settled down near family (almost eight years later), it seems we have begun to accumulate stuff once again.
What have we learned through all of this? What is the key principle God has burned into our conscience through 27 relocations? We realize the temporary nature of all our “possessions” and hold them loosely, because with the Lord the big decisions usually come down to either Him or “stuff.”
For no one can lay any other foundation than what has been laid down. That foundation is Jesus Christ. – Paul (1 Corinthians 3:11)
