Junkitus is a disease that slowly strangles your time and sensibility. Although your brain remains intact, your creativity, sensitivity and concentration are dulled. Thinking is replaced by things. No longer are victims able to reflect upon that which is ultimately beautiful and meaningful. They are taken up with searching and paying for seemingly irresistible bargains and activities that only add clutter to their lives.

How much time and energy are wasted wanting, wishing for, working for or maintaining things we don't need? Have you ever taken the time to ask, "What would my life be like without this?"

When our family of five arrived in the USA after ten years in Europe, all our possessions fit into a crate that was shipped to Boston and was picked up by a friend who put it in the back of his pick-up truck. Now, after 12 years living in America, our lives are a daily battle with clutter. My friends from overseas watch in disbelief as I flip through the mail over the waste basket for recycling paper known as 'our circular file,' tossing the majority of envelopes directly into it, without ever reading the contents. What they don't realize is that the majority of mail we receive is unsolicited form of promotional-hype. We are told that we have always wanted and cannot live without this item we never knew existed before. We are promised that our career, our personal and spiritual life will be catapulted to unequaled heights if we attend this special event or read this new book.

According to a survey in the Wall Street Journal, the average American parent spends 6 hours shopping per week and only 40 minutes playing with their children. Jeremy Rifkin reports that the waste generated each year in the USA would fill a convoy of 10 garbage trucks 145,000 miles long, over half-way to the moon. Francis Schaeffer picked the title for his essays on modern living "Ash Heap Lives" when he considered the outcome of our preoccupations.

The battle with junk requires a strategy. One that I find useful for incoming mail is called the 'TRASH' method.

Toss unwanted items
Refer to others what is relevant
Act on what is truly important for your attention
Save- put in a tickler or appropriate file what is needed for future use
Halt the unwanted mail or phone calls.

As a right-brainer, I have a tendency to spread rather than sort and pile rather than file.

Note these 9 SYMPTOMS OF JUNKITUS adapted from Don Aslett's "Clutter's Last Stand":

1. UNUSUAL DISCHARGE (from closets and shelves).
2. THICKENING OR LUMPS (under rugs, behind drapes, under beds).
3. NOTICEABLE SWELLING (of drawers, closets, files, pockets, waistlines).
4. OBVIOUS CHANGE OF COLOR (in your face, when you've learned you've just missed a garage sale!)
5. CHANGE OF PARKING REGULARITY (You start parking the car in the driveway because the garage is full of junk).
6. A SORE ON YOUR SHIN THAT DOES NOT HEAL. (You keep breaking it open, stumbling over junk.)
7. UNREASONABLE TENDERNESS (toward shiny automobiles, souvenirs and bargains that sparkle).
8. NAGGING COUGH OR HOARSENESS (from talking about your possessions and from reprimanding children for damaging things.)
9. NUMBNESS (to the people you know and the beauty around you.)

This week we go with a mission team to Haiti where the annual wage is less than the average amount of pocket money for American children. We have been encouraged to give away the majority of what we wear or bring.

Let's heed the warning of Jesus: "A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." He warns us about the dangers of building bigger barns for storehousing (Luke 12:15f).

Jesus is not anti-materialistic. He knows we are material beings as well as spiritual beings, and that we have material needs. But He warns us about the anxieties that accompany our preoccupation with material things: "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' FOR THE PAGANS RUN AFTER ALL THESE THINGS, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." (Matthew 6:28-33 NIV).

Life is not meant to be cluttered. Life was not meant for the trash pile.

David MacAdam, Pastor/Teacher
New Life Community Church