The Move

 After my cross country commuting for a year and a half, my wife Sheilla and I have finally been able to make the move from Colorado Springs to Americus.  It’s been quite the series of events, but everything has come together and we are safely nestled into our new home.  Nestled may be a little generous.  It will probably be months before we’re nestled, but at least most of our worldly goods are under one roof.  We haven’t found our plates yet, or our pots and pans, but we’re warm and dry and together.

We humans are an acquisitive species, and Sheilla and I seem to have done more than our share of acquiring over the years.  We had a big house in Colorado—too big for the two of us—and full of room to store the many things we felt we had to have with space left over to hang on to things we’d replaced but still thought we might need someday, in case we came upon a mountain cabin or lake cottage.
 

We’d found a house in Americus before we left Colorado, a nice place but about half the size of what we were leaving, so we joined the downsizing generation.  It was a purifying experience, once we got into it.  We had two profitable yard sales and Goodwill and the Salvation Army both did quite well by us, and it actually felt good to unburden a little bit.

As it happens we probably didn’t unburden quite enough.  As I look at the mountain of boxes in our garage—boxes that surely hold things like plates and pots and pans—I see more garage sales and trips to the Salvation Army in my future. 

There’s surely a lesson or two in this, but I’m not quite ready for them.  It has been cleansing to clear out some of the unnecessaries that we’ve picked up along the way, but there’s a story to just about everything we have, and those stories always seem to start with, “Remember that day. . .”  I know that we’ll collect less stuff going forward, partly because we really don’t need anything and partly because in the new house we don’t have the room and, despite what the movers were probably saying behind our backs, we’re really not hoarders.

But we are blessed.  One of the things I’m always amazed by in my travels to far away places is how little so much of humankind gets along with.  The families living in tents in Haiti get by with a few scraps of clothes, a pot or two, and a grinding sense of hopelessness.  There isn’t any virtue in having nothing, unless it’s a matter of choice, but there is virtue in sharing.  Jesus said that if you have two coats you should give one of them to the person who has none. 

That’s what we’re about here at The Fuller Center for Housing—finding ways for people of means to be blessed by helping those less fortunate to have a decent place to live.  The way we have it figured the resources are there for all of God’s people to have the basics for a decent life, including a home to put them in.  The solutions come as people of goodwill share of their bounty.  By God’s amazing calculus those who give also receive—there is joy in sharing.  And that is what we’re called to do.

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Discover the joy of sharing your time or resources! Here’s how:

• Volunteer with your local Fuller Center covenant partner
• Go abroad on one of our Global Builders trips
• Help contribute financially to a project