Possession #11 - Grandma's Wooden Chair

Michael Lindvall in a 2010 Christian Century article suggests that our human problem is not that we love all our stuff too much - it's that we don't love it enough. Lindvall reminds us that God isn't opposed to stuff. In the 6 days of creation God made all kinds of stuff! And at Christmas we celebrate how the eternal God chose to become one with the very stuff-ness of humanity. The problem tends to be that we don't care about all this created stuff enough. We get bored with our stuff. We toss it in the garbage and buy new stuff. We keep wanting new stuff because we don't honor the stuff already around us.

This chair reminds me of the lasting goodness of stuff. It once sat in my grandparents' living room and is the only thing I have of theirs to remind me of the time I spent growing up on their farm. A couple years ago I gave it to my sister-in-law's father to clean and repair. I want it to last. I don't want a house only full of new matching furniture that looks good on the outside but has no soul. I want stuff that has roots.