I have always been a collector of things. When I started 5th grade I was in the midst of building a Lego empire. I loved legos and had an extensive collection that now, 16 years later, I am devastated I sold at garage sale. At the time, I was building an empire of lego castles and spaceships with every new set helping spur my creative energy and convincing my parents from an early age that I should be an architect. I had amassed quite a collection of little lego treasures by the time I entered the sixth grade.
As I entered sixth grade, Shaquille O’Neal was entering the NBA. And I fell in love with professional basketball. Shaq was my hero although, even in sixth grade, I was acutely aware that I would never be seven foot one or wear size 26 shoes. I started collecting basketball cards and tried my very best to acquire every Shaq rookie card I could, each card become a real treasure in my collection of NBA unknowns and no names.
In seventh and eighth grade, I began to play golf. My Aunt Brenda moved to a golf course in Florida and mailed my family some of her old clubs. We went to visit her one summer and my little sister and I spent our afternoons hunting for old golf balls around the course. We noticed that some of the golf balls had advertisements and logos printed on the sides of the balls. And always being in direct competition with my sister, we spent the entirety of our summer vacation building our collection of specialized golf balls. Several shoe boxes of golf ball resided in my room for years, never once being used by me in a game of golf.
I collect things. I am still guilty of collecting things but I want to skip a few years from my time in Jr. High School to this past summer. I traveled twice to New Orleans this summer. During my second visit, our group had the opportunity to completely gut a house. After spending a couple of days cleaning brush and debris out of peoples yards and delivering welcome baskets to returning residents, we were all thrilled to have the opportunity to do some different work. Most of the gutting work in the area had been completed, but one resident who lived a block from Lake Pontchartrain finally signed a waiver giving a local ministry permission to go into his home and throw away all of his possessions, his life collection of material treasures. Our fourth afternoon in New Orleans and twelve of us grabbed a water cooler, some dust masks, and headed up towards Lake Pontchartrain. We were given specific instructions:
1) everything is trash
2) No matter what you do, do not open the refrigerator.
We were given duck tape to wrap the fridge, a few shovels, and a wheel barrow. Water sat in this house for two weeks. And then it left. And then everything in that home was damp or completely soaked, and it sat there in the sweltering New Orleans heat for two years. Every single thing this man owned was completely ruined. And everything was in his house.
He was a police officer. Several plaques were nailed up to the wall in the living room. He had been a New Orleans Police Officer of the month in 1984 and 1994. His television and his Playstation 2, complete with several NASCAR racing games, were covered in a thin layer of slime that had slowly grown in place over two years. The closet was full of the officer’s clothes, his partner’s clothes, and several pictures of the two of them from the past few years. Make up, shampoo, and deodorant rested in the bathroom, eager for its rightful owners to return.
Yet we were not the rightful owners. And I completely became aware that I was pilfering through someone else’s private life. I had entered a place they did not mean to leave, a place they had expected to return to on the day they left. Dirty dishes were still in the sink and the pantry was full of old food, paper products, and household cleaners. The closet was home to hundreds of Mardi gras beads, a bowling ball, and a few coats for the month or two in the winter when the weather was a little less miserable. Load after load, old electronics, a broken computer, clothes and personal belongings were piled high into the wheelbarrow and carted into the street. Not only did I feel guilty for throwing away the material possessions that defined a man and his partner’s life, but I began to look at my own life and what I truly hold as important.
The images of this home have been haunting me ever since I returned from New Orleans. I wonder a lot about what is truly important in my life and what are my real treasures. I try my best not to focus and center my life on material possessions.
This memory reminds me of this scripture from Matthew: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. "
My whole life I have been waiting for “The Great Memphis Earthquake.” Who knows if it will happen in our lifetime, but things happen, whether it is nature, bad luck, or our own negligence, we can easily lose everything we own. Would I be able to walk away from my house? And never return? What about my awesome TV? What about my bike? What about all of the pictures I have collected over the years that tell my story of growing up? What about the music? I still collect things. I have a 10,000 song music collection that even the thought of temporally losing music, terrifies every bone in my body. I collect art. I am slowly building my home one piece of nice furniture at a time. Have I put my treasures in heaven? Do I cherish the friendships that I make every day, or the times when I do something nice for someone else? Honestly, are my greatest treasures my friends, my family, my relationship with God? For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
