Possessions

When I was a kid, before smartphones and Amazon, it was the toy catalogs that we waited for.

They arrived in the mail, smiling children’s faces splashed across the cover, like a silent promise that real happiness could be purchased within these magical pages. We fought over who got to look at them first. We imagined playtime with this Barbie or that EasyBake Oven.

Without realizing it, we expected that these toys — and the fun they would create out of thin air, the excitement they would inject into our days — would give us new lives. Make us new people.

The toys we did get were fun enough, but they never made us new people. They never gave us new lives. And before long they broke or needed new batteries. They lost their allure, and they went to the attic. And then, many years later, when we got married or moved houses, we found them, and we sighed — more junk to get rid of.

It’s the same now, thirty years later, as much as I hate to admit it. The catalogs have become social media, and the toys have become promotions or pay raises or home improvement projects. I scroll through the feed and my mind lights up. What if we had this? What if we could buy that? What if we could go there?

The rich young man was not sad as he walked away from Jesus because he was losing his riches. He was sad because he wasn’t — because he couldn’t. He couldn’t give them up. Such is the dark magic of materialism: it takes hold when you’re not looking. He thought he was being a good person and doing good things. But he had given his heart away, and he hadn’t given it to God. And now he couldn’t get it back.

Whatever of this world we seek to possess — dollars, cars, clothes, prestige — will come to possess us, in the end.

©LPi