Last evening I read a letter to our church family from one of our missionaries in a country of Central America. In the letter, he tells the story of a ninety-year-old man who has served the Lord most of his life. He tells of his very crude living conditions: a mud and thatched roof hut supplied with only a couple of homemade wooden chairs, a homemade rope and board bed frame, a homemade mattress stuffed with dried grasses. He has never had electricity, running water, or a concrete floor. He has never owned a flashlight or radio because he didn’t want to spend his meager resources on batteries. He was satisfied with candles and besides, the neighbor had a radio to listen to.

The missionary went on to relate that the elderly man couldn’t understand why Christians needed so much stuff to think themselves happy. He had learned to be content in the most primitive of environments. The man recently died and the missionary expressed his longing to see the old man in his new place!

We have just come through Thanksgiving and are now approaching Christmas. If we are not careful, Christmas can cause us to not be content because we don’t think we have received enough “stuff.” As you know, Christmas isn’t about “stuff,” it is about the Savior. There was something else in the missionary’s letter that gives us a clue on how this ninety-year-old learned that life wasn’t about accumulating the most “stuff” in order to be happy. he wrote that even at ninety, the old man would walk about a mile and a half, even crossing two rivers to get to church. Many American Christians won’t even drive a mile and a half in a heated or air-conditioned automobile to get to church. Could it be that therein lies the difference between a contented life and a discontented life? A life of joy or a life of complaint? May you find yourself seeking the kingdom of God first (Matthew 6:33), rather than the kingdom of “stuff.”

Pastor Jeff Berg