A Simple Life of Worship
It’s not easy to live simply. It’s much easier to get wrapped up in the cult of consumerism that pervades our American culture. I attribute this to the fact that most of us live in excess. If you’re reading this in all likelihood your basic needs are met and you probably have several things in your closet that you’ve forgotten are even there. We are used to having more than we need. Living simply takes practice if only becomes so much of our social interactions are built upon giving and receiving. Everywhere we go we get stuff – whether its groceries, gas, or promotional trinkets for the hometown football team.
However, living simply is a great remedy for many of the supposed problems we face. When you don’t have a lot of stuff, you don’t worry about it breaking. Maintenance concerns cease to exist and you don’t have to buy all the things necessary to care for what you already have. Reducing how much stuff you accumulate not only reduces your concerns, but it puts fewer constraints on relationship, it helps keep work and money in the proper perspective and it generally makes contentedness easier to achieve.
Living simply, however, is about more than just possessing fewer things. In my view, it is about enjoying the ordinariness of life, finding beauty in the commonplace, laughing often and recognizing that the cares of this world are temporal. When one is not distracted by the worries of Earth, it’s easier to keep our eyes on our Savior – the One who should be the object of our time, attention and worship, anyway. Worship, in its essence, is acclaiming that which already exists – namely that God is God and we’re not. There’s nothing more simple than that.
