Honest Goods

So here we were, a family with a strong testimony of preparedness who had just thrown out a good percentage of everything we owned - much of which was our emergency preparedness items.  It was a challenge for my husband who had some really expensive backpacking gear but the Spirit also told him who would need it more than he would.  So we literally gave almost everything away.  God was teaching us to take the resources that He had blessed us with and use them the way that He commanded.  What a great test for us to go through and learn that we really are just stewards not owners.  So now we needed to replace those items and as we set out to find replacements the Spirit guided our research.

We found that we were led to companies whose products were made and sold honestly.  Before this experience I did not even know what "Fair Trade" meant and now most everything in our home has been produced in a fair trade market.  The majority of things we bought came from the US from small family businesses who were doing their best to use the creations of the earth in a righteous way.  We bought some of our clothing from European countries because there just is not much of an organic wool market in the US.  We only brought into our home the amount of items that were needful and no more.  All excess that we had the Spirit directed us to freely give away.  We had a nice stainless steel fridge in our garage that we no longer needed and thought maybe we would sell but right before we posted it online we heard of some neighbors whose fridge had just broken and we knew where it needed to go.  That happened time after time where we were made aware of someone's need for the very thing we were getting rid of.  God helped us eliminate the items He told us to eliminate and blessed others in the process.

We started learning how to make things by hand- mostly sewing and crocheting for me and some wood-working for my husband.  This made us value and appreciate the work of others much more.  We came to understand that when we really live the Law of Consecration it will be because we all value one another's time, work, and abilities.  We will willingly share our talents for the benefit of God's kingdom.  The desire to get things at a cheaper price is not of the Lord.  It didn't matter if I could head to a store and buy an item for $10, the Lord would rather me spend $40 on the item and have it produced honestly - where no one was ripped-off in the process.

I wrote earlier of the time that we sorted through all of our clothing and I felt sick inside about the unnecessary amount that we had accumulated, but those feelings of a pained conscience were also due to the Spirit telling with with every item I had thought was a "steal" when I bought it, that it was offensive to God because of the dishonesty that went into it being produced and sold so cheaply.  I heard the Spirit say to me over and over regarding most of the items in our home "The Atonement has to cover that."  My heart was so weighed down with just how inclusive the suffering was that Christ endured.

We were not sent here to accumulate all the cheap goods that the world offers.  If our treasures are in the world then so is our heart.