Is there anything good about more stuff?

The Christmas season is filled with stuff. And the Christian community more and more is focusing not only on the fact that Christmas has become less about Christ, but what could we do for the Kingdom with all of that money! Today in church my pastor went through a message of how much Americans spend on Christmas each year, and how much it would cost to educate every child in the world or deliver clean water. Pretty staggering numbers and pretty sad about the choices we make as a culture.

So today my mind has been thinking about a few things….because I work around needs….and because I work to ship stuff. What do I think about stuff?

When I look at the life of Jesus I see that He did some stuff with stuff too. Now, in church we would likely hear that Jesus was not about stuff. And that’s true, because Jesus was about relationship. But see, Jesus used stuff to build relationship and we ought to too.

When Jesus was on earth he met people’s physical needs before he met their spiritual needs. It wasn’t that He didn’t care for their spiritual needs, but he listened first. When the people were hungry and the disciples said to send them away, Jesus said, “You feed them”. He didn’t try to preach to the people, he simply cared for their physical needs with stuff: 5,000 loaves and fishes. And because He cared for their physical needs the people were open to have their spiritual needs cared for.

So, amidst all of the bad things out there about stuff, I focus on the good we can do with stuff because we give it away. And when we give it away because we care about others it’s amazing what happens.

I hope that this Christmas you’ll find ways to not only give away your stuff that can hold you hostage, but you can help non-profits give away there stuff too.