A few stats Dick shared in his sermon:
American spend $18 billion a year on makeup, $17 billion a year on pet food and $15 billion a year on perfume. Yet it would only take $5 billion TOTAL to achieve universal literacy, $10 billion to have clean water for EVERYONE in the world and $19 billion to end hunger and malnutrition COMPLETELY.
What if we decided to tuck away an extra $5 instead of buying that new lipstick, borrow the tool we need to fix the car instead of buying it, or carpool and save a few bucks on gas. What if we consciously made decisions to do without and saved back that money for people who really needed it. What a difference we could make!
Skeptical? Feel like you couldn't make a difference with a few dollars here and a few dollars there? Maybe you'd be surprised. I loved the point in Dick's sermon where he compared giving generously to acquired tastes like coffee. Maybe a few dollars will change the world. Maybe it won't. But I truly believe it has the potential to change your heart... and isn't that what this is all about?
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So how do we make sure we do something with the extra $5 instead of just sticking it back in our wallet or in a bank vault?
Money not spent on something trivial doesn't equal a good thing. We have to take it a step farther and find a way to show love with the money we would have spent on perfume, makeup or the baconator.
I have some friends who set aside money in a jar and let it accumulate until they find someone/something they feel God is calling them to give to. That seems like a cool way to always have something set aside to give when it seems appropriate. Or making a separate savings account might work for some people. Or maybe (if you're like me and can't just let money sit there) commit to a worthy cause that be a normal item in your budget and won't give you the flexibility to buy those extra things. Probably a lot of ways to strategize it based on personality, etc... but you're right, the bottom line is shifting our attitudes to be more generous and focused on showing love.
We don't carry cash on us and keep a list of what we want to purchase each month, making all of our purchases planned purchases and part of a budget. When we're really good at sticking to that, we don't have a problem with nickel and diming stuff and have more money left over for giving to ministries we really like or for providing some other opportunity for one of our kids. When we pay bills we can give then. I have to admit, though, that we're not very good at sticking to the plan -- as the commercials say, "life comes at you fast".
I also think that while we do want to keep moving toward giving, that simply not buying trivial things has a certain amount of value on its own. So much of what is produced is produced at a cost to someone, such as last year when GAP was busted, once again, with child labor violations. They were BUYING children and putting them on amphetamines to get more work out of them! Of course they said they'd clean it all up,but how many times have they said that and then within a couple years are doing something just as evil again? So, anytime we purchase something that money is going towards someone or something. When I think about the fact that I don't know for certain what my consumer dollars are supporting, it really causes me to think two or three times before purchasing anything. It's an aspect to consider.
Also, the more trivial stuff we accumulate, the more bondage we are in. I think I see this incredibly clearly because of living in a small space with 7 people. Everything you buy has to go someplace, has to be maintained or used. I think living in a cluttered enviornment has more impact on our stress levels than we realize.
And, lastly, there's the environmental aspects of shopping -- how much of the trivial stuff we buy simply ends up in a landfill, or in the case of technical gadgets, ends up polluting what might have been a clean landfill?
I agree that not buying things has inherent value of its own. This has been a hard lesson to learn, though. I feel like it's similar to calling a friend to discuss something that just happened that you need to process through instead of praying about it to process through it. Buying nothing is intangible, whereas buying a little something is immediately gratifying, as is getting feedback from a voice on the other end of the telephone. For me, it's a constant lesson of learning to be still and be contented with God and what he provides.
That's a really good analogy! One of the little serendipities of giving instead of buying is that giving can give you a kind of rush too. But in the end, I think the issue is contentment, and being content can be so elusive. I woke up content this morning. I really did. Then I drove by a house that we looked at several months ago and then decided not to purchase for various reasons. Suddenly my home wasn't big enough, flat enough for our wheelchair user, or family friendly. It was amazing.
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