Living Simply

My wife and I have recently moved back from a year of relief work in China, helping to implement psycho-social programs to help kids build resiliency and recovery from the trauma of having their school buildings crush them during last year's May 12th earthquake. Today, many of these children and their families are still living in temporary housing projects. Often, a family of 3-5 gets one room along a long row of rooms in a two or three square mile complex. It would appear, at first glance, that they are living a life of simplicity. Disasters can strip anyone down to their bare minimal quite suddenly.

Today, my wife and I are both students, studying for degrees we believe God has called us to in order to continue serving and empowering the "least of these" wherever they may be. Unfortunately, our dedication to studies means a lower income for the household, I currently working part time as an adjunct instructor at a community college. The reality that we will soon be expecting our first child in March is an extra weight and joy that promises to bring as much worry as blessing as we prepare our home.

Naturally, I battle bouts of anxiety and worry on an almost daily basis. There is the strong sense of calling, and with it, security. I trust that in seeking first God's Kingdom in our lives, He will fulfill His promise to provide all that we need. Yet in moments of weakness when reviewing bills or the costs of car maintenance here or travel arrangements to see family there, that sinking feeling can begin to pull me down. Questions of how to make it through the later months when savings is low ambush me in the midst of studies.

There is no question about it; God has provided exactly what He has promised up to this point. We ask for our daily bread and we get it. A surprise scholarship here, an early beginning to part my time work there. More and more possibilities abound as the days go by. I praise and glorify my Lord because He has given my family exactly what we have needed for this season. I believe that He will continue to provide as my family seeks God's will and kingdom. Lord, help me in my unbelief.

"The central point for the discipline of simplicity is to seek the kingdom of God and the righteousness of his kingdom first and then everything necessary will come in its proper place," says Richard Foster. If this is the discipline of simplicity, than the season of life I have walked into are the perfect grounds for practicing it. Not simply an outward simplicity built in cutting down on spending and such to ensure our economic livelihood, but the fostering of the great inner simplicity that builds confidence in our relationship with God as primary. It is the building of a divine center, the refining of a will for but one thing.

There is no question about it; my wife and I feel a call to serve the fatherless and the widow, and believe our lives ought to be prepared to the fullest for such a task. This entire season of life from studies to preparing for a family plus all the daily moments of simple acts of living from eating to walking can be placed in the perspective of Kingdom building. Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is within us. He also says that living streams should abound in us and flow out to others. The life of simplicity then is both the building of God's Kingdom within our souls and the preparation for that inner light to ignite our environments. It is the rejection of fear as well as of the desire for power or affluence. It is trusting with the simplicity of a child toward a loving father.

But what would I do if an earthquake shattered everything I had? What if something took away my family, my home, and my entire pattern of life? How than shall I live? Such possibilities produce a natural and proper concern. Such a question pushes the greatest challenge of inner simplicity right in our faces. Is my family but a gift from God that can be taken away? How will the Kingdom be incarnated in such a tragedy? How shall He speak into the broken world such as this? I have not had to face it, but so many have in so many parts of the world from the inner city ghettos a few blocks from my apartment to refuge camps the world over. Yes, simplicity is a discipline for those who have. I consider my self a "have" and not a "have not." I know my life today calls me to greater internal and external simplicity to reflect God's glory and providence. I believe He is transforming me in this process. But I end this reflection with a new question to pursue: how is the discipline of simplicity to be enacted in the midst of loss, suffering, and pain when what little you already had has been taken? After all, it could be any of us.