Stuff. If you have ever had a garage sale you know that by the end of the day, you just can’t wait to get rid of the stuff you were trying to sell. In the beginning, you haggled and negotiated for the best price but by the end, you are willing to give it away. After it is all over, you swear that you will never fill your garage with stuff like that again.
Scripture is packed full of proverbs and stories of people who have struggled with the possessions of this world. We wrestle with that still today. We know it can’t bring happiness, yet we strive to collect as much stuff and possessions as we can. We sometimes go to one of two extremes. One extreme is that we seek after more stuff thinking that this will satisfy us and we can find true enjoyment in the number of toys we have at the end of life. OR we go the other way and live a minimalist life feeling guilty or wondering if we should have nice things. Is it wrong to have nice things while others go without?
Solomon is going to address the theology of stuff. While that’s not a term you would see in most or any scholarly works, stuff dominates our lives yet we go back and forth as to how God feels about it. In this passage, we see God mentioned six times and he has a clear perspective as to how we should view stuff.
