Prisoner of our Posessions

In case you don't follow this blog http://storinguptreasuresinheaven.blogspot.com/ I'm sharing this post here. Some things are worth repeating... again and again and again- until they sink in.

If I could just have a bigger house. If only we could get a new car. I just would like to buy a Plasma TV. I need a vacation. I want granite counter tops. I need new clothes......shoes........furniture.

Sound familiar?

It seems to me that we have become prisoners to our possessions. No matter how much we have, it is never enough. We always need more. But, do we really need any of it? Or are these things just holding us back?In the meantime every second another child dies. Every minute another child is orphaned. Yet, we are more consumed with what we don't have. And we instead make excuses.Gas is too expensive. The mortgage has to be paid. The kids need new shoes. We are saving for Disney World. We have a car payment. We just redid the kitchen. In case we have forgotten....WE CAN'T TAKE ANY OF IT WITH US.

All of it is fleeting. One day we will die and all that we acquired will be the only thing we leave behind. Is this how we want to be remembered?Wow, she sure did have a nice house. I was really impressed with his Hummer. She certainly had a nice closet full of designer clothes.Or do we want to leave behind another message?When we are gone, will it have mattered what car we drove? Will it matter how many vacations we took? Will anyone care if we were well dressed or if our house was nicely decorated? I hate to be the one to tell you this, 20 years after we die, it will ALL be outdated anyway. And NO ONE will care.We are only here for a moment. Our lives are but a grain of salt. We can't take anything with us when we die. Our lives need to be less about what we can get and more about what we can give.Why are we so unwilling to sacrifice? Is it really too much to ask to give up our stuff so that other people might LIVE? In the meantime, in the time it takes to fill our carts up at Walmart with a bunch of crap we don't really need, 300 children will have died needlessly.

Around the world, some 26,500 children die every day.
That is equivalent to:
1 child dying every 3 seconds
18 children dying every minute
A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring every week
An Iraq-scale death toll every 15–36 days
Almost 10 million children dying every year
Some 60 million children dying between 2000 and 2006

The silent killers are poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. In spite of the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage.Jesus didn't come so that we might "have STUFF". He came so we may have "LIFE". Yet so many will never know any sort of life. Millions of children will never even see their first birthday.I truly believe that the world can be changed. I believe that the enormous orphan problem can be solved. I believe that poverty can be eradicated. But, it is not going to come without a cost. It takes sacrifice. It takes us breaking the shackles off that our possessions have left us with.

Luke 17:33 Whoever seeks to save his life loses it, but whoever loses his life preserves it.