life on planet earth on Hoarding

We are not cisterns made for hoarding, we are channels made for sharing.

Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected.... Hoarding is idolatry.

Dave Nessia was starving himself to death while hoarding food. It was on the hit reality show Alone. After 73 days alone in the wilderness, he had lost 40 lbs. and his blood pressure had fallen to 80/...

Have you ever seen an episode of the A&E TV show Hoarders? It’s a show about perfectly normal-looking people who live in perfectly normal-looking houses who become overwhelmed by their possessions...

Gracious God, We come before you today scared. Scared for our health, scared for our jobs, scared for our loved ones. Help us Lord, not to dwell in our fears, but rather to turn to you, trusting that...

As the people of Judah cried out to God in their time of catastrophe, we remember that we, too, can bring our burdens before God. Let us join together in confession, confident that God hears us. Lord...

Poet Donald Hall told the story of a hermit in New Hampshire, a man who passed away leaving behind sheds full of hoarded stuff. In one of the sheds was a box labeled, “string too short to be saved.” ...

In his classic monologue, comedian George Carlin riffed on the mountain of stuff we compile. His assertion is that a “house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.” So when you get right down to ...

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.

For many of us, living in excess doesn’t express itself in extremities. It doesn’t translate to tying $4,000 to balloons and releasing it into the air. It doesn’t have to amount to owning six houses (...

The three immutable facts: You own stuff. You will die. Someone will get that stuff.

The heart clings to collected treasure. Stored-up possessions get between me and God. Where my treasure is, there is my trust, my security, my comfort, my God. Treasure means idolatry.

For all our time and attention, no matter how carefully we curate our stuff or how much we might enjoy ourselves along the way, we’re all merely stocking and staging someone else’s opportunity for bar...

The drive to possess is an engine for hurry.

If anything, there appears to be an inverse relationship between our growing obsession with the home as a totem object and the disintegration of families that has become the chief social phenomenon of...

Avarice is fear sheathed in gold.

I have a neighbor who is obsessively neat. He lives on ten forested acres, and every time he drove up his long, winding driveway, the disorderly dead branches on the Ponderosa pine trees bothered him....

Our lives are characterized by too much of a good thing—too much to eat, to buy, to watch and to do, excess at every turn.

Extravagant wastefulness in time might prove the most productive thing you choose for yourself.

Pushing aside emotions only makes them stronger.

There was a period when I believed stuff meant something. I thought that if you had matching side chairs and a sofa that harmonized and some beautiful lamps to light them you would have a home, that e...

Psychologists and mental health professionals are now talking about an epidemic of the modern world: “hurry sickness.” As in, they label it a disease. Here’s one definition: A behavior pattern chara...

When we insist on doing too much, we are not only inflicting the damage of this choice on ourselves, we are sharing this damage with those we love the most.

Once an idea has taken hold of the brain, it's almost impossible to eradicate.

Poverty wants some things, Luxury many things, Avarice all things

The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard t...

Those who give, receive back in turn. By spending ourselves for others’ well-being, we enhance our own standing. In letting go of some of what we own, we better secure our own lives. By giving ourselv...

A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.

After striking a large deposit of gold, two miners in the Klondike gold rush were so excited about unearthing more and more gold each day that they neglected to store up provisions for the winter. The...