Why do people accumulate so much material things? When we have money (or credit cards), we start buying things that takes our fancy whether we need them or not. In the part of the world where I come from, we love bragging. I remember as a child we would brag with our friends the number of cars our dad have...the number of houses....funny enough we never bragged about the number of wives (lol)!
The time that God started opening my eyes to the vanity of it all was a few years ago when I was moving houses. I moved into the current house with 1 or 2 loads of van and now, a few years down the line I was moving to another house having to do like 10 loads! Why? We had accumulated material possessions; many that had remained unused for years. Why again? I see, I like, I buy. But I stopped because everything to me became vanity. I spent money to buy, then pay someone to keep clean and now I was spending even more money to relocate! Enough.
A colleague of mine told me about his three or four garden sheds filled with 'things' - mostly new things. They started with one shed which soon got filled up, so they bought another shed to house the things they bought, and then another. Now he couldn't even get things out of the sheds when they need them so they end up buying new ones. I told him that I was coming to raid the sheds very soon.
Seriously, do we need to accumulate material things that we would hardly use? If you have many cars, you can only drive one at a time. The many mansions that you have all over the world accumulate dust because you can only live in one at a time. What about shoes, clothes, jewelry, etc. Seeing the evidence of our 'wealth' or 'debt' makes us happy... for a while. We 'show' people how much money we have....which puff up our pride. Some of us even think it is the evidence of God's love for us...but He also loves the poor. Even when we die, we can be covered in gold with the most beautiful casket.....it ends up rotten in the dirt and grave thieve would be very happy to relieve you of your gold because you ain't taking it anywhere.
So why am I blogging about this? There are millions of people without food to eat, those that go through dust bins to get scraps to keep alive. There are millions of people that covers their nakedness with the same well worn, torn and patched cloth that is not fit for summer let alone winter. There are millions who are grateful just to have somewhere to lay their head and get a decent sleep every night. There are thousands dying every second from one disease or the other because of poor nutrition, unsafe water, poor hygiene.
As you accumulate one more material thing that you don't need, might never use, have a thought for those who desperately need food, cloth and shelter. Those things you buy will not yield anything, rather invest your money where the interest is in saving lives. The reward to you is joy everlasting.
I know it's your money and you probably worked very hard to get it. All I'm saying is that you buy one less material thing you don't need, might not use and invest the money in those who do need and will use. Change a life - for good.
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