Free from Anxiety

Gospel: Luke 21: 34-36

The anxieties of daily life are things we all have.  But are they things we need not have at all?  Jesus tells us these anxieties can weigh us down and cause us to love sight of what is truly important.  If we take stock of what we are anxious about, we will find it is all about our material possessions.  We have houses full of stuff, so much so we need storage units for the stuff we cannot fit in our houses.  We have security and alarm systems, guns, cameras, and the like to protect out stuff. 

We toil at a career and jobs in order to pay for our stuff and the stuff that protects our stuff.  But what if we didn't have all this stuff? What if we lived a simple life and divested ourselves of all this stuff, keeping only what we really needed?  Perhaps we might not be so anxious.  Going further, what if we put our stuff to good use by giving it to others who do not have stuff and need stuff.  What if we were conscious of this dynamic continually, using our surplus to help others instead of adding to our stuff?

Such talk is heresy in a capitalist world that demands and requires us to be consumerists.  We moderns have even coined a pet phrase for all this consumerism - hoarding.  The ancients called it sin.  To hoard possessions when others are in dire need is simply sin.  It is this sin that causes our anxiety.  But if we live simply and share our surplus with others we will not be anxious, and we will be doing what we should be doing as followers of Jesus, ready for the day of his coming.