Been reading Proverbs and Ecclesiastes... become the oldest person in the room for a meeting or two... joined the walk of a couple of friends who are in the midst of chaos... been watering trees everyday and wondering if I'm as wise as God intended me to be at 43, if I'm as available to God as I need to be.
Today I start a challenge of thinking eternal vs. temporal in my finances. It's the focus of our weekend services next week and our team will challenge the congregation to tangibly interact with this concept. Many on the serving team for the week are doing this, this week so that we can approach the challenge to our church from a place of understanding not ony how big the "ask" is, but what God can do in the midst of it.
In my case, I've decided not to spend money on temporary (unnecessary) things this week. I'm thinking I might blog this out, here.
From the outside, I'm a pretty simple person. To my eye, most people i know have more "stuff" than we do. But, I still have what I want, most of the time when I want it. I still spend money on myself to make myself feel better, whether that's the morning chai, a trip to Old Navy, or dinner out because I didn't plan ahead and am tired and don't want to cook or clean up.
Our pastor shared the following yesterday in church:
Hamilton Securities made it easy to practice an attitude of gratitude when they published their list of what the world would look like if you shrunk the Earth’s population to a village of 100 people. They said there would be . . .
80 people living in substandard housing,
70 would be unable to read,
50 would suffer from malnutrition,
Only one would own a computer, and
Only one would have a college education
I'm pretty blessed, even though I am craving a tall vanilla whole milk no water stirred Tazo chai tea latte...
3 comments:
I read about a 'movement' if you can call it that, where you're challenged to own only 100 items:
http://www.neatorama.com/2008/06/14/100-thing-challenge-living-with-just-100-items-in-your-life/
I think I'm going to try it, but the challenge will be to actually identify which 100 things I need, and which 'count', like, say a router/internet connection/computer/speakers/mic/external storage, etc. that actually count as 1 item or as several items. For me, the FIRST thing that came up were CLOTHES. I HATE CLOTHES. I should have been in the Garden of Eden before the Fall. Anyway, random thoughts about 'stuff' and what 'ownership' means.
I just read an article a couple days ago about a family that decided to not spend on anything unnecessary for a month...just the mortgage, fresh fruit and milk and as little gas as possible. At first, it was new and fun; then it got a bit old; then they got creative and found clever ways to have fun for free and made different things for dinner out of what they already had; then they were directed to focus on others so they started volunteering at a soup kitchen. At the end of the month, they had saved a big chunk of change and instead of rushing to the mall and the grocery store and Starbucks, they wrote a check to the soup kitchen. They did go back to some luxuries, but their experiment seemed very valuable for them and inspiring for others.
My initial thought...I think I could do that in October, as long as I had a chance to plan and spend what I "need" in September. Yeah...that's it.
Elaine
Who would have thought that giving something up and giving that money would be so hard. Or maybe it's so hard for me and I'm just imagining it's hard for others. But it sounds like it's a challenge for you so I'm glad I'm not alone.
don
voiceofdon@blogspot.com
Post a Comment