My wife and I have no gold in our house, as long as you don’t count our wedding rings. What we had was stolen a few years ago and we never replaced it. Now our daughter and her family have no gold in their house either. With the soaring price of gold and our culture’s insatiable need for more drugs, a thoughtful burglar found a way to break in without breaking windows, kindly left my daughter’s wedding pearls, and took all jewelry of value. All gold is gone. We are told that the jewelry is probably being Fed Ex’d to Nevada where it will rendezvous with a lot of other stolen jewelry and then get back into circulation so it can be enjoyed by someone else.

So, we are following the normal protocol.

I have found comfort in knowing that we have nothing of significant value in our house.

I told my wife that I would be willing to get her some decent jewelry as long as we also invested in a safe that was anchored to the core of the earth.

I feel very sad for my daughter, who no longer has some family heirlooms.

She and her husband are now security experts. You can be sure that there will be no more burglaries in that house.

We are wondering whether she should replace her cat with a Doberman. The cat’s only defensive ability is to provoke allergies in susceptible burglars. We think a Doberman would inspire more universal fear.

My daughter is going to redouble her efforts to keep her bedroom neat. Then she won’t have to explain to the investigating officers that, no, the mess all over the floor was not a result of the robbery, and her parents won’t have to explain that, no, she was not raised by a pack of wolves.

And of course, having gone through some of those more mundane steps, we are left with that wonderful question, “And to what else am I too attached?”

Just imagine. What would it be like to hear that something in the house broke, or the car was totaled though all passengers are fine, and be largely unmoved? It is possible. We were recently in California and friends let us use their immense Suburban for as long as we needed it. As we were leaving they said, “We are just so glad that you have the Suburban because if the car gets ruined you should still be safe.”

In other words, if they had to make a list of the objects to which they were attached, the Suburban, at least, would not be on it. I, on the other hand, can remember times when I was reluctant to loan things out for fear that those things would come back damaged.

Lord have mercy.

We know that everything is the Lord’s and we are mere stewards who are called to freely give and enjoy opportunities to be generous. But we also know that primitive cry of “MINE” exists in every human soul.

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. Jesus, looking at him with sadness, said, "How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! (Luke 18:22-24)

This is one of the hardest passages in Scripture. It isn’t saying that we must follow the mendicant tradition and divest ourselves of all earthly goods. But it is calling us to be beggars of the heart.

Edward T. Welch, M.Div., Ph.D., is a counselor and faculty member at CCEF and holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology with a neuro-psychology specialty from the University of Utah as well as a Master of Divinity degree from Biblical Theological Seminary. Ed has been counseling for over twenty-six years and has written many books and articles on biblical counseling.