By Danny Minton

One of Kathy’s younger brothers was admitted a few weeks ago to a facility due to advanced dementia. This past week, he was placed under hospice care. During his life, he spent his time buying and selling antiques and collectibles. However, during the past months, he had become more of a hoarder and recluse, obtaining thousands of items and keeping them in his room.

We recently went to help clean out the room and decide what to do with the items he had collected. Some things we hope to sell to pay for his funeral, several loads were taken to a thrift store, and numerous loads to the dump. It was time-consuming and challenging to decide what to do with all that he had collected, some of which we couldn’t understand why he had gathered so many of one item. 

As I went through his things, I was reminded that these were things that he had collected and treasured. Many were probably important to him. When he was home, sometimes someone would pick up an item, and he would simply say, “Mine.” Now, those important things to him would be in the hands of others without his input on what would be done with his treasures. The fate of his things had fallen into the hands of someone else, someone who would distribute his treasures without his knowledge. Some items contained the names of people neither he nor we knew but whose family had sold them.

As I helped go through his things, my mind thought of all the things that I have and how, one day, the fate of those things that I treasure would fall to someone else’s decisions. Where will the football from my high school state championship end up? Who will buy the baseball glove my dad bought me when I was 12, or what will happen to the keepsakes of my youth and marriage? Family will keep some for a while, and eventually, my treasures will wind up in a thrift store where the memories are lost or in a landfill in an empty lot. Perhaps a few will be passed from generation to generation, but the stories will be lost and forgotten. It’s the reality that our things in this life are only temporary.

Jesus warned us about putting so much importance on the things of this life. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Matthew 6:19-21 (NASB) 

The life we live, how we treat people, how we serve the Lord, and what we say and do that make life better for ourselves and those around us are the things that are much more valuable than the possessions we see as valuable. Our legacy should never be based on what we possess but on who we were while we walked in our lives.

Scattered throughout our home are items here and there from past family members. We keep them, not because they are valuable, but because they are reminders of the lives of loved ones and the good memories they bring. They will be passed on to our son or other family members to do with as they please. 

All my things will fall into someone else’s hands to keep, sell, give away, or trash. It will be their decision, not mine. As I think about it, that’s okay. After all, they are just temporary things that God has given me to enjoy during my few years of life. My prayer is that my life will be viewed not by what I collected but by who I was in life.

How important to you are the things you possess? Remember, they are just things with value only for a short time, but they are not as important as how you live your life for the Lord. All the possessions you have will one day be gone. They will be taken away, sold, distributed, or thrown away, never to be remembered again. However, your legacy can far surpass the world’s material things. I can think of no more excellent compliment than for God to say to me, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

Danny Minton is a former Elder and minister at Southern Hills Church of Christ