Author Julia Ubbenga was raised in a middle-class family with upper-class grandparents. Ubbenga’s grandmother showered her with gifts and often took her shopping, even from a very early age. Ubbenga writes that, though her grandmother exemplified many virtues, throughout the numerous shopping forays she learned a detrimental lesson: “More stuff equals more happiness. Eventually, the ‘stuff + more stuff = happiness’ equation became ingrained in me. Deeply. To the point where it became a part of who I was. I didn’t debate or question it.”
Several years after she married and had children, Ubbenga faced an existential crisis and hit rock bottom. Literally swamped beneath her multitudinous possessions and the debt that resulted, she cried out to God for help. The Holy Spirit led her to read Luke 12:13-21, Jesus’ parable of the rich fool, in which listeners are commanded to “be rich in what matters.”
Ubbenga began to understand how she had lost her way: “I’d become a cog stuck in the wheel of consumerism, and I was good at it. Make money, buy stuff, feel happy, feel restless, buy more stuff. Rinse. Repeat.”
Ubbenga realized that decluttering her life meant much more than giving things away and refraining from buying more. It involved an inner decluttering of her heart. Of that process, she writes, “Inner home decluttering relies on a power beyond ourselves. The transformation Jesus offers isn’t so much something we work for as something we commit to receiving. It’s a daily process of renewal, of opening more space in our heart for God, that occurs in a piecemeal fashion. Spiritual growth is a practice, and it's ultimately God’s work.”
Peppered with insightful anecdotes and practical inner decluttering tools and outer decluttering tools, Ubbenga’s book could prove to be a breath of fresh air for Jesus-followers and Jesus-seekers who want to “be rich in what matters.”
(Zondervan)