What if

My sister used to like to play the ‘what if’ game. What if you were stranded on an island? What if something happened in America and they were relocating everyone to some remote place and all you could take was one thing? What if you won ten million dollars? What if you could build any kind of house you wanted, what would it be? What if… what if… what if…

As a Christian playing the ‘what if’ game may not be the best use of my time but I’ve played it with her a lot. As time has passed the ‘what if’ game has centered more around the ‘what if you won a million dollars, what would you do’ or ‘if you had millions of dollars what kind of house would you buy or build, where would you live?’ kind of thing.

I’m pretty sure that game falls under worrying about tomorrow or loving money or something that would mean I shouldn’t play it. All I can say is when I do play that game with her I never take it seriously and my sister isn’t a believer so for her, I guess, it’s permissible. As for me, I’m just playing for the enjoyment of the time spent with my sister.

But today…as a child of Christ…I’d like to instigate the ‘what if’ game. I’m not going to dream up millions of dollars and suggest we figure out how to spend them, I’m not going to imagine my dream house-although if I did a lot of people would probably be shocked at what I’d build with millions of dollars at my disposal…it wouldn’t be some big fancy home with all the latest gadgets and heated floors.

No, today I want to play ‘what if’ based off Scripture. Matthew 6:24 says…

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

If you look through my old posts you’ll see I’ve written on this subject before. Today I don’t want to look at Scripture and learn what it says about money and things. I don’t want to think about covetousness or idolatry. Today…I want to play ‘what if.’ What if we lived in a world where we didn’t grow up thinking we had to have so much stuff? What if we weren’t bombarded with things from the moment we open our eyes every morning until we go to sleep at night.

But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. 1 Timothy 6:8

This past June I moved from one house to another. The move took us five miles from where we had been living. Two loads in a rented moving truck and numerous loads in a minivan later…we were finished. As happens when you move there were plenty of things that got thrown out, given away, and left behind, but there were even more that were shifted from one house to another. That, I presume, is why it’s called moving.

But here’s where things began to open my eyes…I had months of forewarning that this move was coming. In preparation I packed up everything we didn’t absolutely have to have. Because we might have had to move on a moment’s notice (we got two weeks) I even packed our clothes and dishes in plastic totes so that I wouldn’t have to pack them on short notice. We literally lived out of totes. Toys, clothes, dishes, even food, were all packed and awaiting the day we would move.

For three or four months we lived like that. Long before the day came to move my daughter asked me if we really needed all that stuff that we’d packed up and stored for months. I noticed that there were maybe five things that we wished we hadn’t packed and there was nothing we dug into those taped up boxes to get out.

The thought took hold…

How much of this STUFF did we really need? As we spent day after day lugging boxes and hauling STUFF from one house to another that question dug in deeper. When I was covered in bruises and so tired I didn’t think I could move another thing I wondered why I was bothering and if we’d notice the loss if I just walked away from what was left to be moved.

Once the actual moving was over as I unpacked box after box…I got rid of about half of what I was unpacking. My mentality had changed from the day I had packed it up. Still tired and sore from moving, every item I looked at seemed to be a liability instead of an asset. I’d unpack two boxes and have one full of things to get rid of when I was finished. Every item I saw at that point seemed to scream ‘you’ll just have to move me again’.

And I did move some of it again. I moved it right over to the thrift store drop off so I wouldn’t have to deal with it again. Even after getting rid of so much we still had too much. Toys, clothes, dishes, books… It was all there, having to be put away, needing to be picked up, cleaned. And it’s still there.

There’s a movement in America today where people are moving into what’s being called tiny houses, some the size of parking spaces. I read somewhere that these houses don’t usually save their owners money in the buying or building stage because these custom built homes are so small that even the furniture has to be custom built so the houses often cost more than a traditional house. I’m sure there are as many reasons for these people to be moving into these expensive playhouse sized homes as there are people that are doing it.

But here’s where those tiny homes find their place in our ‘what if’ game…The families moving into them are generally your traditional American families. They’re moving out of large homes with your average number of bedrooms for their family size, they have stuff, stuff, and more stuff. They couldn’t keep all their belongings if they wanted to because they couldn’t fit it in their new tiny house if they crammed it in from floor to ceiling in every room.

So they pare it down.

The get rid of STUFF.

They downsize.

Some use totes, some use backpacks, some probably use boxes or bags. But they can only take so much stuff and that stuff must fit in the smaller sized space they now have available. When I moved last summer I didn’t move into a tiny house but I did move into a house that had much less space than the one I came out of. I had the same number of rooms and I gained a garage but…my rooms were smaller than the other house, half the size in most cases. That meant I couldn’t fit everything in my new home if I wanted to. I had to downsize.

I’m not going to ask you to downsize your belongings. I’m not going to downsize mine. But as I look around at the things I have now, even after downsizing, I see plenty that could be parted with. We don’t have knickknacks. We don’t have collections of things- at least not for the simple purpose of collecting something. Even still, we could easily fill boxes with stuff that we could part with. Things that just set there collecting dust. Things we want for…whatever reason we want it.

And that brings me back to the ‘what if’ game…

What if we had to move and would only have space for the absolute necessities?

What if we truly tried to live without loving money (or the stuff it buys) and we showed it in the things we owned?

What if we tried to live out Scripture and sold off everything, keeping only what we absolutely had to have?

What if?

What if?

Our human, westernized minds, when thinking of ‘absolute necessities’ grab onto…what? What makes your list of necessity? What makes mine? If I sit down with a piece of paper and start listing the things I HAVE  to have…what goes on that paper?

When I was a child my family moved often, as in once a year. At first we just moved houses but stayed in the same state but when I was 12 we started moving out of state. Every year we moved from this state to that one, then the next year we moved back again. Those cross country moves required more downsizing, more getting rid of, more choosing only what we had to have.

I learned to pack things I wanted to keep inside shoes, papers and pictures could be packed  in the pages of books, any little space was a spot to pack something. When you’re moving a family of four in only a full sized truck…you learn to use your space wisely. No space is left empty and everything gets puzzled in so that there are no spaces. And still we wound up with things we couldn’t fit.

I have a friend that moves often. Her husband changes jobs, changes states, for various reasons. She’s told me on more than one occasion that because of all the moves she has learned to go through things and get rid of stuff often. She pares everything down to the bare minimum when they’re moving. They came to my house during one move. They had a van and a small trailer. Everything they owned was in there. This was a family of six.

I thought then that they didn’t have much, that they couldn’t have kept much at all. And as they greeted us they started giving us things. Their son gave my son a bag of blocks, blocks that he loved. Their daughters gave my daughters stuff. And as I looked at their small amount of belongings parked in my driveway and my house full of stuff, I wondered what they thought. And if we really needed everything we owned.

We’ve downsized a lot since then. And still we have too much.

Which brings us back to the ‘what if’ game.

So here it is…

What if we had to move, relocate, escape…whatever. Or maybe we’ve simply decided to make life as simple as can be; we’re going to live for Christ and nothing else. What if we had to? It’s not an option. We can’t choose not to participate. Now we’re only playing ‘what if’, we’re not really doing this, simply imagining what we would do if this ‘what if’ were real.

What if we knew we were about to walk away from everything we owned? In this ‘what if’ we truly are going down to the bare minimum, the absolute necessities. We are given a standard sized backpack. You may pick the color but nothing else. After that they’re all the same. They all have a main section, a big front pocket with a couple of small pockets inside it, and a smaller pocket on the front of that pocket. That’s it. That’s all the space you get. Each pocket has at least one zipper and each zipper pull has a little cord connected to it.

This is your new home. This is your dresser, it’s your entertainment, and it’s all you have. Each person in your family gets a backpack. You don’t have to worry about sharing your space, they have their own, even the babies. This is all for you.

Now here are the rules. Food and water will be available in your new location. You don’t need to worry about taking anything to eat or drink. There won’t be anywhere to shop so there’s no replacing things when you get there. What goes in your backpack is all you’ll have for an undetermined amount of time. You can pack anything you want in your backpack. There are no restrictions on what you can pack, only that everything must fit in your backpack and all pockets must zip easily. You get to choose what’s most important to you, what you want to keep above everything else.

Once your backpack is packed you’re walking away from everything else. Are you doing it for Christ? Then everything else will be sold and given to the poor. Are you doing it because you’re moving into a house the size of a parking space and there will be five other people in your new home? Whatever your reasons…you can pick any scenario you want…but when you pick up your backpack that’s all you’ll have.

Now…

What are you going to pack?

What can’t you live without? The truth is…there is nothing you can’t live without. You could simply walk out your front door today with nothing but what’s on your person and you’d be fine. But you aren’t being told to do that, you’ve been given a backpack.

What will you put in it?

Why did you choose what you did?