We’ve got to come to terms with possessiveness! The tendency is to keep, to hoard, to accumulate, to amass. Louis Ginsberg has written:
“It is the things we always hold That we will lose someday;
The only things we ever keep Are what we give away.”
“Bertha Adams was 71 years old,” reported Charles Osgood for CBS. “She died alone in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Easter Sunday. The coroner’s report read, ‘Cause of death: malnutrition.’ After wasting away to fifty pounds, she could no longer stay alive. When the state authorities made their preliminary investigation of her house, they found there the resemblance of a pigpen. One seasoned inspector declared that he had never seen a dwelling in greater disarray. The woman had begged for food from neighbors’ back doors and had gotten all of her clothing from the Salvation Army.
“From all outward appearances she was a penniless recluse, a pitiful and forgotten widow. But such was not the case. Amid the jumble of her unclean, disheveled belongings, two keys were found which led the officials to safe-deposit boxes at two different local banks. The discovery was absolutely unbelievable. The first box contained over 700 AT&T stock certificates, plus hundreds of other valuable certificates, bonds, and solid financial securities, not to mention a stack of cash amounting to nearly $200,000. The second box had no certificates, only cash (and a lot of it–$600,000 to be exact). Adding the net worth of both boxes, they found well over a million dollars the woman had in her possession.”
Charles Osgood added that the estate would probably fall into the hands of a distant niece and nephew, neither of whom dreamed that she had a thin dime to her name. She was a millionaire who died a stark victim of starvation in a humble shack many miles away.
What blatant possessiveness! How right the prophet Isaiah was in describing the possessive: “They are dogs with mighty appetites; they never have enough. They are shepherds who lack understanding; they all turn to their own way, each seeks his own gain (Isaiah 56:11 NIV).
May/June 1985