Excerpt from Luke 12:13-21

[A rich farmer] thought to himself, "What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?"  Then he said, "I will do this:  I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods."... But God said to him, "You fool!  This very night your soul is required of you.  And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?"

Meditation by Martin B. Copenhaver

When was it exactly that we began to need such big closets?

When my family lived in Phoenix, we had a comfortable home that was built in the early 1980s and, like most homes built in recent decades, it had very large closets—not large enough for Imelda Marcos' shoe collection, mind you, but plenty large for all the stuff we had.

When we moved to Massachusetts, we bought a house built in 1931.  And, like most homes built in that era, it has small closets.  This made unpacking a particular challenge.  We simply did not have storage space for all of our stuff. 

How did we end up with all this stuff, anyway?  And is that why so many houses are so large these days?  After all, as the comedian George Carlin put it, what is a house but a large box to keep all of our stuff, with a lid on it?  And we have a lot of stuff these days.  So now the average American house is twice as big as it was fifty years ago, while in the same time period family units became smaller.

How much stuff is enough?  And how much space is enough to store it all?

For most of us, "enough" is defined as something more than what we have, a shifting standard that can be, and often is, adjusted upward.

I've never been to a dog track, but I'm pretty sure about one thing.  I think I know the name of that wooden rabbit that keeps the panting pack running around the track.  That rabbit's name is, "Enough."  And, whether it is a dog race, or a rat race, no one ever seems to catch it.

Prayer

God, your creation is infused with your generosity.  You take care of our every need.  Quiet our hearts — and rebuke us — when we fear that there is not enough.  Amen.

About the Author Martin B. Copenhaver is Senior Pastor, Wellesley Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Wellesley, Massachusetts. He is the author, with Lillian Daniel, of This Odd and Wondrous Calling: the Public and Private Lives of Two Ministers.

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