24 Billion Reasons that Just Because You Can...

The number I hadn't heard, but the enormity of it I think all of us are aware of in one way or another - according to businessweek.com, the self-storage industry in our country generates $24,000,000,000 of revenue per year. $24,000,000,000!

That's 48,500 'mini-warehouse facilities' containing 2,300,000,000 square feet of space, or, if you prefer, 7.3 cubic feet of space for every man, woman, and child in our population.

I don't know about you, but those kind of numbers beg the question: Why?

Why is it that we as a society have the need for so much space above and beyond what is in our homes?

Now, before anyone might get defensive, let me say that this isn't to begrudge anyone that has anything in one of these units. I have had need for one myself in the past when cleaning out my grandparent's home in the midst of graduate school.

In the midst of the biggest shopping season of the year (of which I have and am taking part) I hope that we take time to ask ourselves, "Why?"

Just because we can get great deals, does that mean we should?

Just because we can rent spaces to store stuff that doesn't fit in the spaces we call home, do we need to have so much stuff that we need these storage spaces?

At North Cross, we are in the midst of what we are calling, "Peace Be With You: Advent/Christmas 2014." Kathy got us off to a good start on the First Sunday of Advent by looking at how Mary found peace in the midst of what most of us would find terrifying circumstances. This week, we will be looking at Joseph's journey as recorded in Matthew, and seeing that Joseph could have done some things, simply because they were an option for him, and yet he chose to run away from that to which he was entitled.

Can we get some storage space to hold our excess possessions? Yes.

Could Joseph had done some things differently and be perfectly justified in doing so? Yes.

However, just because we can do something...

Grace and Peace, Lamar