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Most of the stuff we pay substantial amounts of money for becomes obsolete in a brief time. However, the stuff that only takes time like love, compassion, understanding, and other relationship building attributes, once developed, stay with us for a lifetime.

Today is super Bowl Sunday, an undeclared holiday in the United States when American football fanatics throw all other things important to the side and sit for over four hours in front of the television to watch a modern-day gladiator battle. If you had staked out a Best Buy store yesterday, anywhere in the United States, you would have seen someone rolling out a big new television, to watch the game. The confusing thing is that some folks buying new sets are purchasing them on credit. They don’t have the money to buy the thing outright; however, they are more than willing to make substantial draws against future earnings for the joy of seeing their favorite team battle it out in the arena for the chance to be the champions. In 2021, the total personal debt in the U.S was at an all-time high of $14.96 trillion. The average American debt (per adult was $58,604 and 77% of American households had at least some type of debt.

We Americans love our stuff. We’ll fill our attics, closets and every nook and cranny in our houses to store our stuff. When we run out of space in our humble abodes, we’ll rent space in the nearest self-storage facility. We would make better use of this money by wisely investing it somewhere. I heard a stand-up comic once (can’t remember the name) make a joke about people who use their garages to store a $1,000 worth of junk while $75,000 worth of automobiles sit outside in the elements. If you can find the logic in that, please tell me.

If you come from a Christian-faith-based tradition, you’re familiar with the message of love presented by God. His son, to whom we dedicate our lives, lived a short life of thirty-three years on earth, void of the material entrapments that so many of us cherish passionately. Scripture tells us that He gave His life as a living sacrifice so that we who believe in Him will experience an eternal existence with Him, absent of all the troublesome concerns we experience during our short lives. That message makes it clear that material stuff has no value compared to what God has offered for our consumption. Are we saying one thing and living another thing completely? Can we have our earthly cake, plus access to the celestial feast, too?

I’m old and blessed…hop you will be too.