Read 2 Peter 3:10

As my wife and I glance back over our years together accumulating stuff, we have to laugh. Everything fit into the trunk of our ’53 Chevy on our first move. The next move called for a little rental trailer that hauled our things to a tiny apartment for grad school work. Four years, one child, and much more stuff later, we got into our next place (with the help of a couple of good friends who drove big vans) by packing out the biggest multi-wheeled U-Haul they made in ’63. That move was the first time I discovered why places were built with two-car garages. Our one car barely squeezed in.

Our next move? A big-league, super-long Brand X Van Line with an upright piano strapped on the back. We followed along in our four-door sedan which was also filled to the brim with baby stuff. It was like the Grapes of Wrath all over again. Add a second child...a girl (which explains about half the van’s contents!) and you’re getting the picture. When we moved again, we needed a bus and a barge.

You’re probably laughing to yourself considering your own tendency to hoard years of stuff. Yet Scripture offers a penetratingly sober assessment of the real value of earthly accumulations:

The heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire. (2 Peter 3:10)

There’ll be no trunks or trailers, storage units or even garages in that day. Nope...won’t need ’em. All the stuff of a lifetime of moves will go up with one great “whoosh.” Everything. Well, not everything. Relationships won’t be destroyed, they’ll continue on...transformed and renewed, eternal and simple once again.

Are you focused on eternal things today—those values and individuals who will join you in eternity? Or are you stuck in the frenzied pursuit of more stuff? It all goes up in smoke—eventually. Turn your heart to the things that matter. Devote your life to pursuing Christ and His Kingdom. Then you’ll be ready, whenever that day comes.

Devotional content taken from Good Morning, Lord...Can We Talk? by Charles R. Swindoll. Copyright © 2018. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries. All rights reserved.

The full devotional can be purchased at https://www.tyndale.com/p/good-morning-lord-can-we-talk/9781414380681.