With gas prices nearing five dollars a gallon and inflation on the rise, many of us are thinking about cash flow and how higher prices will impact our spending. For millions of Americans, inflation is making it difficult even to buy the basics. For others, it will influence how we spend any extra cash—which got me thinking about materialism and our perpetual need to accumulate “stuff.”
In 2018, my Mom and Dad died forty days apart, and my mother-in-law passed the following year. Following their deaths, my husband and I spent a lot of time sorting and dispersing their personal belongings. It was a long process of deciding what to keep and what to donate. Two of our parents spent the last months of their lives in assisted care facilities, and it was eye-opening to see how few possessions were really necessary. They did well with just a few changes of clothing and a handful of personal belongings. When we packed those rooms, everything they used in the last months of their lives fit into a few boxes. It got me thinking—why do we spend our lives working to accumulate things we don’t need? The writer of Psalm 49 made this observation:
Do not be afraid when a person gets rich,
when the wealth of his house increases.
For when he dies, he will take nothing at all;
his wealth will not follow him down (Psa. 49:16-17).
I watched these verses unfold in real-time. Our parents’ belongings were dispersed among family members, and the rest were donated or thrown away. Decades of work were carted off in the back of pickup trucks, and boxes were dropped off at Goodwill.
It’s not uncommon to get caught in the hamster wheel of materialism. Ellen Goodman said, “Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for—in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.” [1]
Obviously, it’s important to work hard and provide for our families. But it’s easy to take it a step further. So many of us are captivated by the latest and greatest gadgets and develop an insatiable appetite for the next thing.
I’m not suggesting we live as minimalists (although if that’s your thing, I applaud you), but what if we asked ourselves a couple of questions before making a purchase? Things like: Do I need this item? How often will I use it? Will it be beneficial to me or anyone else? What will happen if I don’t make the purchase? Is this item likely to get donated or sold at a garage sale? And then—what if we waited for a few days before we bought it?
Let’s hope gas prices and inflation goes down soon. But we need to remember that no matter the state of the economy, we ultimately won’t find what we’re looking for in our next purchase. Possessions are prone to disappoint. Charles Spurgeon said, “Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else.” [2}
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/materialism
[2] Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, (New Kensington: Whitaker House, 1997).
