Simple…it’s a word that is not often used to describe any aspect of living life in the 21st century, yet it’s a word that describes what I believe is the deep longing of many a heart.  The culture in which we live does nothing to help us on this search for simplicity. I used to hear folks talk about how teenagers had more peer pressure today than they had twenty years ago ( and that was twenty years ago when I was doing youth ministry) but I have a news flash for you. Peer pressure doesn’t stop when you graduate from high school. If anything it just intensifies.

Think about it. We graduate from high school, go to college or enter professional life in some shape or form and the pressure to perform begins. There are performance issues on the job. Then there is the pressure to “keep up with the Joneses.” (Sorry if your name is Jones) You know the drill…gotta have that club membership, that new house, that new SUV, that boat…the list goes on and on. Or there is the attitude, “This job doesn’t pay enough money. I think I need a higher paying job so that we can afford the things we want.” 

Then there is the pressure of a culture that encourages us to be busy: civic clubs and church activities that fill a calendar to the brim, piano lessons and band, soccer and and softball, dance and gymnastics. It seems that we are teaching our children that a truly fulfilled life is determined by the number of days that we can fill up on our calendars, yet we so often burden our schedules to the point that there is not any margin and then we ask, “Why can’t life be simpler than this?”

Does it all sound familiar? No wonder there is no margin in our schedules or our bank accounts and precious little room for God. The phrase from Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God” is completely lost on us. Either we don’t know what it means, or we have at least forgotten.

Have we also forgotten that all of life is to be lived for Him and not for ourselves? Remember, “we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has ordained that we should walk in them.” That’s what Paul says in Ephesians 2:10 right after he tells us that we are “saved by grace through faith and that it is a gift of God, not of works so that no one can boast.” So we are saved to serve Him, not to serve ourselves.

Is there any help? I think so and I think we can find it in scripture. I think we will only find it when we stop trying to live up to what the world expects. I think we will only find it when we remember and then teach our children that all of life is lived for God and God alone. If we want to be a people who “don’t let the world press us into its mold,” as we are taught in Romans 12:1, then I think we need to listen to the heart of the prophet Micah. In Micah 6:6-8 we find these words…

6 With what shall I come before the LORD,
      And bow myself before the High God?
      Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings,
      With calves a year old? 
7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
      Ten thousand rivers of oil?
      Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
      The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 
8 He has shown you, O man, what is good;
      And what does the LORD require of you
      But to do justly,
      To love mercy,
      And to walk humbly with your God?

…And what does the Lord require of us…to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God. Now that’s a recipe for simplicity that I can handle. What do you think?

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