People and our Things

I am finding out more and more that people love their things, their possesions, their trinkets, their stuff. And it seems like the more things they have, the more they want. That just doesnt make any sense. And some people just wont let others be near their things. But then there are others who realize that their stuff is just that, stuff. Just this weekend I ran into a couple of cases of both. The first incident was that one of my friends let me borrow his car for the weekend. This was a very generous gesture, considering he has a pretty nice car and I would be driving a couple hundred miles the whole weekend. When I asked to borrow it, he didnt even put up a fight, basically a quick "yeah sure" and some basic rules like "dont wreck it." But then I ran into the other people. Someone wouldnt let my dad borrow his truck for a day to tow our Samurai. He said that he didnt want anything to happen to it, if something where to happen, it would rather be himself that did it. Thats such bullcrap. Not to mention an insult to my dad. Its just a truck.

Then there are the people that have it all but its still not enough. I hate to pick on people, but I have to give an example: A family friend has three motorcycles, two of which are his wifes(the 650 didnt have enough power), three offroaders, a boat, four vehicles, a hot tub, a swimming pool, and many other little trinkets, and the other day he was talking about getting another smaller trailer, aside from the long one, in case he only wanted to haul one vehicle instead of two. When is enough....enough? Holy cow, how can you own so much and still not be content? I have another friend (hes gonna read this and hate me) that has four ipods, just got a shuffle recently because the other three were too big, couldnt work out with them. I mean, Im not saying that Im perfect in this area either, I too like having "things" (luckily I can never afford to own more), I just have to remind myself that things, take my car for example, is just a bunch of metal and plastic and rubber strategically placed together to produce a swift mode of transportation.

While AJ and I were on our trip, while watching the sun rise we were next to this big, beautiful house on the beach and I made the sarcastic comment that their pool, hot tub, awesome veiw, boat, second story, and what was probably their second house probably made these people really happy. He got a kick out of that. Are our things making us happy? Maybe for a couple of days. I know that I get a thrill out of a brand new possesion. But does it make us happy to own more, and more, and more?

Todd and I had a conversation earlier this summer that stuck with me about people and their possesions. It was a little far fetched, but it would be awesome if it were true. He wondered why we couldnt all just share our possesions, he asked why every single family needs their own lawn mower, why not just have one mower for the whole block that we could use when we needed? During TNT(Thursday Night Thing) at Campus House Church, we are studying Acts in the Bible, and it says that the early church did this. They would share their possesions, their possesions didnt belong to one single person, but a whole group of people.

I really dont have a solution to all this, I just wish we wouldnt focus so much on our possesions. It seems like a waste of time.