I grew up in Chester, Georgia. According to the 1940 census, its population was 340. That was less than a dozen years after the 1929 stock market crash. People didn’t have a lot of material things. Everybody believed that having enough to meet their basic needs was enough – everybody, that is, except one man.
He owned the only bank in town plus stock in several other banks. He owned the biggest grocery store, lots of stock in several industries, several thousand acres of farmland, and virgin timber scattered across Georgia. As many people would express it today, “He had a lot of stuff.” But, to him it still wasn’t enough. One day I heard him say, “I don’t want all the land in the world; I just want all the land next to mine.”
If he had owned all the land next to what he already owned it would likely still not have been enough. He was not a bad man. I never heard anyone say he was dishonest. He was a member of one our town’s churches, and he attended church on a fairly regular basis. But his primary focus was on the “stuff” to which he held a deed. He had more than enough, but to him it was not enough. He died and left it all!
Avarice is one of America’s sins. There are well over 30,000 self-storage facilities in our country offering over a billion square feet for people to store their surplus stuff. Fifty years ago this industry did not even exist. Americans currently spend almost $15 billion a year just to store their extra stuff.
William Randolph Hearst, for example, was a “stuffaholic.” He had 3,500 square feet in which to put his stuff. At one time he owned 50 miles of California coastline. His house contained 72,000 square feet in which he kept 3,500-year-old Egyptian statues, medieval Flemish tapestries, centuries-old hand-carved ceilings, and some of the greatest works of art of all time. Then he died. How shortsighted of him! We all will die one day.
Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-20). One day we will all give an account for what God has entrusted to us. That will be either an occasion of great joy or one of deep regret.
Apostle Paul reminds us: “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (I Timothy 6:9-10a). Even so, all of us have mail-order catalogs delivered to our homes in the mail. There are over 40 billion (that is right – billion). And every one of them has as its goal to influence us to buy more and more “stuff.” It is how things in the “want” category get moved up to the “necessity” category. It is what could be called “catalog-induced-anxiety.”
Yale theologian Miroslav Volf says that there are two kinds of richness in life: “richness of having” and “richness of being.” Richness of having is an external circumstance; richness of being is an inner experience. When we focus on the richness of having it is because we have been led to believe that this is where happiness lies. Nothing could be further from the truth. John D. Rockefeller once said, “I have made millions, but they have brought me no happiness.” J.J. Astor said, “I am the most miserable man on earth.”
Multitudes of people in our country have no soul satisfaction. But I have some good news: the richness of being is always available. You can have very little stuff, and with God’s help, still be rich in the ways that count. It is what will enable you to become compassionate, generous, grateful and joyful.
The Paper Pulpit 
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