“Do we not see people every day, endowed with vast estates, who keep on joining field to field, dreaming of wider boundaries for their lands? Those who dwell in palaces are ever adding house to house, continually building up and tearing down, remodeling and changing…
Nothing should content a man’s desires but the very best…Is it not, then, mad folly, always to be craving for things which can never quiet our longings, much less satisfy them? No matter how much such things one has, he is always lusting after what he has not; never at peace, he sighs for new possessions.
Discontented, he spends himself in fruitless toil; and finds only weariness in the evanescent and unreal pleasures of the world. In his greediness, he counts all that he has clutched as nothing in comparison with what is beyond his grasp, and loses all pleasure in his actual possessions by longing after what he has not…”
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) in “Of love toward God not without reward: and how the hunger of man’s heart cannot be satisfied with earthly things” Chapter VII in On Loving God.
Downsizing stirs within us the desire to have the best possessions money can buy for our townhouse, and we don’t even move in until 12 August 2014! What should we do. The decision making process requires discipline to consider repeatedly “What do we need?” rather than “What do we want?” as the desires of the flesh are insatiable. On our journey we are finding that the only thing that satisfies us is God, so we resolve daily to set our affections on Him. Care to join us?