Wrap Up Some Stuff This Christmas
Collecting might not be as heinous as we make it out to be.
In a home built into the side of a hill in Kansas City, MO, you’ll find Cathy Runyan-Svacina, but most people know her by a different name: The Marble Lady. With over a million marbles in her collection, Cathy’s exuberance for the long-forgotten game became her life’s passion. Marbles mix within the gravel of her driveway, her license plate reads “MARBLS”, and her vast collection of rare and interesting glass spheres can be viewed at a museum in Ohio.1
Cathy is just one of a long list of avid collectors who have found joy in a variety of “things”—like Ron Broomfield, who houses 1,600 gnomes in his cottage, or Jack Copp, who calls 120 vacuum cleaners his own. Other collectors choose tin cans, postage stamps, memorabilia, paintings, or baby dolls to fill their homes2. These collectors might bring us a smile and a shake of our head, but if we’re honest the mental picture likely raises our blood pressure. After all, collections are out; minimalism is in.
These days less is more. We scroll past images of homes with open floor plans, white walls, and bare floors. The latest kitchen cabinet designs feature hideaways for any kind of appliance so your counters can remain as blank as possible. It’s not just the appearance of emptiness we want, but deliverance from stuff itself. Nobody wants to be a hoarder, so we welcome Marie Kondo through the front door. We slim down, throw out, and exchange the concrete for the abstract. Who needs stuff, when you can have an experience that takes up less real estate?3
In a way, I can’t argue. Walls covered from head-to-toe, and rooms packed to the brim can be stressful. Our consumer-driven mentality is out of control, and we feel it everyday as more and more waste piles up around us. Sometimes a good answer is to slow down, cut back, and remove the unused things in our lives.
But sometimes it’s not. Because you and I were created for a world full of things. God placed Adam and Eve in the garden surrounded by objects: dirt, leaves, food, fungus, rocks, and then some. Not only that, he prepared his creatures to make more things. He enabled them to carve wood into shapes, create paintings, sew tapestries, mold metal, and form toys to play games like marbles. Things were to multiply right along with the image bearers of God. Thus, every tool, object, pillow, toy, and tchotchke in our world today stands as one more creation under the God by whom all things exist (Rom 11:36).4
And in his wise and mighty way, our Lord uses this stuff for our good. Look through the Scriptures, and see how he’s linked objects to his people: stones, memorials, rivers, clothing, lampstands…the list continues—most notably culminating in the very bread and wine we drink in the Lord’s Table on Sunday. These objects exist in time and space, yet they point to something much bigger—God’s faithfulness, his love, his mercy, long-passed moments to remember, and even the hope of the future. God offers us the physical to help us learn, understand, and delight, because we are embodied beings who interact with the physical every day. By giving us the tangible, God enables us to hold onto the intangible.
My family’s vacation to West Virginia has slipped into ancient history, yet when I touch and hold the ornament I bought that trip and hang it on the tree, the joy and activities of that trip come flooding back to me. I may have the memory of my daughter’s infancy, but when I touch her old pajama fabric sewed into her stocking, I see her wriggling on the floor more clearly. As my fingers brush over the carved nativity figure I place on my piano, I am transported back through the past fourteen years of Christmas decorating when I did the same.
We all have objects like this. For Cathy, marbles pulled close some of her beloved memories of childhood. For others it’s a particular artist’s work, a favorite collection of crockery, or a crocheted blanket of a grandmother. These collections link us to the loved ones who have left, the lessons we’ve learned, and the memories that feel so far away. They can remind us of God’s faithfulness and assure of his grace. The objects in our home can import more than just consumerism, gluttony, and greed. They can be the means of God’s grace to remember what matters as we see, feel, and hold that object each day.
I don’t really think we should begin of collection of two-hundred hairdryers or fill our basement with garden gnomes. There is much to say on excesses on both sides, of course. But I do think we shouldn’t completely negate the place of things in our earthen home. While the culture tells us to embrace the bare and minimal, I think we could take a note from the collectors of the world- and see the beauty in the stuff God has made. In his kindness he can enable it to mean a lot more than you think.
Sheehan, Susan and Means, Howard, The Banana Sculptor, the Purple Lady, and the All-Night Swimmer, 2002.
https://entertrainmentjunction.com/the-marble-lady/
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/gabrielsanchez/the-most-insane-collections-of-random-stuff-in-the
Several years back there was an excellent article on this that Samuel James linked to, and I cannot seem to find it again. I loved the author’s thoughts on it, and years later, I’m still thinking about this idea in regards to my own study and research. I wish I could credit the author right now and collaborate with her work- but I am sadly unable. Please tell me if you remember this piece!
Of course, this doesn’t mean it’s all good. :)