The Values Revealed in the Moving Process

Packing up one's possessions for a move across multiple states is somewhat similar to analyzing data for a budget. It's a process that, at its best, requires us to ask if we're living according to our values.

Once, I could have fit everything I owned into a car. Of course, I could do that because someone else was paying for the larger items, like furniture. Now, having done a hurricane evacuation or two, I know that most of what I still value most can still fit into a car. However, if I have to sleep in my car or on the floor for too many nights, I'll miss the bed I've left behind.

Once, I moved once a year, as a grad student, always on the hunt for more affordable housing. That process helped me with the winnowing of possessions. Back in those days, we actually did move ourselves. We knew the weight of our possessions.

This year, we are lucky that we can afford to pay for movers to do the heavy lifting. But we're still using this opportunity to evaluate: to think about how often we use an item and whether or not it's really worth the cost to move it. I'm also trying not to be too hard on myself for having an abundance of stuff.

If we are aware at all, we know that even the poorest person in the U.S. probably has more stuff than poor people in other countries. And as I have packed up to move, I have wondered if the fact that I have this stuff means that poor people elsewhere have even less. I am also aware of the sweatshop cycle of many of our consumer items: the item is made in a factory in a far away country, shipped to the U.S. and sold cheaply--then once the consumer gets tired of it and donates it to charity, it often makes its way back to the original country where poor people of that country access our castaways.. This process is most common with the clothes so many of us wear.

Over and over again, throughout the sacred scriptures, God calls us to envision a better world, one where there is enough, and people don't have to rejoice over the cast away items of the rich. Over and over again, we hear the poets of the Bible and the prophets calling us to live as if that world is already here--the inbreaking country of God, the one that is both here now, but not yet fully developed.

Moving time is a great time to analyze what we're doing to make this inbreaking country of God more apparent. But we don't have to wait until we move. We can do this any time--and the world would be a better place if we did this assessment on a regular basis.

Where are our lives in sync with God's values? How can we make changes to help the inbreaking country of God take root?