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Good morning. Clearing the home of someone who’s died can feel like a painful step along the journey of grief, no matter how much time has passed. I heard on this programme that hundreds of things that belonged to Freddie Mercury are to be sold at auction. When he died in 1991, he left his home in London and its contents to his former girlfriend, Mary Austin, who’s lived there for the last three decades. She’s now decided to sell its contents, apart from some personal gifts that Freddie gave her, to put her affairs in order. The collection includes paintings and other works of art, costumes and furniture. When asked what she finds hardest to part with, she said ‘his written lyrics, because they’re a reflection of Freddie’. I remember dreading the thought of going through my mother’s belongings after she died, working out what to keep, and what should go, and to where? For many, that difficult task is also about dismantling their own childhood home, with all its rich memories. One hears about bereft parents who feel unable to clear a child’s bedroom, after the child has died, keeping it exactly as it was left, imagining that somehow the child might return. Charity shops can feel like homes that have been dismantled — full of things that are usually not valuable, but had value once, as the cherished possessions of someone who’s now died. In the Bible there is much about the pitfalls of cultivating an unhealthy obsession with material possessions, the pursuit of more and more, and the vanity of showing off what we own. We do though also learn how to be grateful for the things that God provides. In the book of Ecclesiastes, it says ‘Few things in this life are better than to enjoy your life and the good gifts from God, in a spirit of faith towards God’. Many of the things we own that feel most precious to us, are special not because of their monetary value, but because of their connection to people we have lost. It’s the person and the relationship we miss that gives value to these things. Their very presence in our home can help us to sustain something of the other person in our life. If we remember that we are only ever the stewards of the things God has provided for us, we might reflect that what’s important is not the thing itself, but our relationship with God.