Thoughts about stuff

If you haven’t watched this video of the tsunami hitting Japan last Friday (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uJN3Z1ryck), you should watch it.  It’s stunning.  In 5 minutes, it goes from some street flooding to buildings being ripped off their foundations and carried off. 

My first two thoughts in rapid succession were “WOW that’s fast” and “WHOA that’s powerful”.  The third thought that quickly followed those two: I can’t imagine watching my home be picked up and carried off, knowing that I will never see any of my stuff ever again.  There’s my life, floating away.  It’s heartbreaking.

I don’t consider myself to be overly materialistic.  I don’t feel like my identity is wrapped up in how much stuff I own or how expensive it is.  When something breaks, I generally sigh, mourn it’s demise for a second or two, and toss it in the trash.  But in nearly 37 years, I have lived in 20 different homes.  (Granted, 2 of those were 3-month temporary housing.)  I’ve only lived in one house for 5 years, and I left there nearly 27 years ago.  So while I love my condo and it’s location, for me, it is the stuff in the condo that makes it “home”.  (That and my cat.  But we’ll exempt her from this discussion.)  I know it’s just stuff, but it’s stuff that I have put together over the course of 36+ years in order to create an ambience that is my own.  Some things are replaceable.  Some things are not – things with lots of memories attached to them, family heirlooms, things I collected from my travels around the world, pictures I took, cross-stitches I labored over…

To see all of my stuff destroyed by earthquake or washed away by a tsunami would be heartbreaking. 

I would cry. 

I would get angry. 

But I also know that, eventually, I would start speaking truth to myself. 

I would remind myself that my identity lies not in these things but in my relationship to God.  I would remind myself that He is faithful and will stand by me.  I would remind myself to be thankful to have survived, that life is infinitely more valuable than stuff. 

And then I would start to rebuild.

"One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.  For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent and set me high upon a rock.  ...I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.  Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD."  (Psalm 27:4-5, 13-14)