More Enough, Already

I preached on this out of Luke 12.32-34 this morning and with reference to my previous post here. I also quoted Randy Alcorn's excellent and challenging book, Money, Possessions and Eternity.

He writes of a PBS television special called "Affluenza," which addressed what it called the "modern-day plague of materialism" (p31). Also,

God created us to love people and use things, but materialists love things and use people. 33

Then there's this which addresses both last week's gospel warning against covetousness and today's warning about possessions,

Greed surfaces in possessiveness and covetousness. Possessiveness relates to what we have, covetousness to what we want. Possessiveness is being selfish to what we own, not quick to share. To covet is to long for and to be preoccupied with having what God hasn't given us. It' s the passion to possess what is not ours. (p34)

Should I mention (confess) that God doesn't seem to have given me a sleek, shiny white MacBook? Sigh.

My morning St James Devotional Guide gospel this morning was from Mark 14. These two verses came at me with a wee twist:

51 And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, 52 but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.

"Ran away naked" was the phrase that lit up. You know how they do. Now that linen cloth was a fairly important possession from which to run away, I'd say. Why is the fact that it was linen recorded?

Perhaps we should be doing a little more of that, running away from our stuff, linen and otherwise; not naked necessarily, but more lightly clothed perhaps?

And, by the way, one final off-the-topic (wierdish) thought...Run Away Naked would be a good name for a band, I thought. I suggested it to my son the musician, but he was strangely unexcited. You heard it first here.

More than enough, already.

5 comments:

rbenhase said...

Interesting thoughts.

Sun Aug 12, 10:09:00 AM MDT 

Ronda said...

Hi Gene

A book I would recommend on a similar theme, is Sister Mary Jo Leddy's "Radical Gratitude" which examines how consumerism taps into and co-ops our natural yearning for God, leading to perpetual dissatisfaction with not having enough, which then becomes internalized so that we are "not good enough" and lose sight of God's creative power in our lives and a sense of awe and wonder that helps sustain the soul. It's written for a specifically North-American audience. Mary Jo Leddy is a professor of Regis College, TST (Jesuit) and this simple but profound piece of work is wonderful for self study or use in a group where discussion and reflection can be employed with others. Interspersed with her thesis are several meditations. This is one I thought I would like to share:

It is the ingratitude that binds us.
Our failure to see what we have,
on the way to getting more.
Our disregard for what we may step over,
on the way to somewhere else.
Our lack of attention to the person by our side,
on the way to someone else.
Our dismissal of the good that we do,
on the way to something greater.

Al that we take for granted,
falls through our hands and dissapears from sight.
And we too fall away from ourselves and from You. (God)
We walk by ourselves,
by the wayside,
and do not recognize you,
on the way to something better.

Peace.

Sun Aug 12, 02:03:00 PM MDT 

Gene said...

...something better than God, we think. Lord, have mercy.

Sun Aug 12, 02:05:00 PM MDT 

Peter said...

Yup, I've read that book - very challenging, indeed. Something for all of us in the West to read, I think!

Mon Aug 13, 02:06:00 AM MDT 

100 Thing Challenge UpDate « GENEralities: said...

[...] 15th, 2007 by Gene Our downwardly mobile StuckinStuff friend to which I referred in More Enough, Already is getting down to some nitty-gritty and has gathered his 100 Thing Challenge eggs into a single [...]

Wed Aug 15, 10:27:00 AM MDT