Sometimes life is so unnecessarily complicated it makes you want to give up! I wanted to sign on to an online portal for my child’s school lunch menu. The platform said I needed to update my password (they make me reset it every 60 days). It took five e-mail exchanges and a mind-bogglingly long password I would probably forget after choosing it to enter the site. And then the site required two-step verification across multiple devices. All of this to read the school lunch menu! I didn’t have the second device handy to verify the password, so my kid just had to go to school not knowing what she would have for lunch!
The author of the book of Ecclesiastes writes,
“See, this alone I found, that God made human beings straightforward, but they have devised many schemes.” (Ecclesiastes 7:29).
Of course, some complexity in life is necessary. Passwords and verification systems exist for a reason. But many of us know the feeling that our lives have become cluttered not only with technology, but also with endless striving, anxiety, consumption, comparison, and distraction. We are exhausted by the sheer weight of managing modern life.
In our recent class on the spiritual discipline of simplicity, we reflected on how simplicity is not primarily about minimalism, decluttering closets, or rejecting all possessions. Richard Foster writes in Celebration of Discipline that simplicity begins as “an inward reality.” It is a way of living rooted in the conviction that God is enough.
Jesus spoke about money, possessions, and anxiety constantly. The pursuit of more can quietly begin to shape and control our lives. Simplicity asks us to untangle ourselves from the illusion that more will finally make us secure, important, or whole.
Jesus says in Matthew 6, “Do not worry about your life… strive first for the kingdom of God.” Foster argues that this freedom from anxiety is one of the deepest signs of simplicity. A simple life trusts God in times of plenty and in times of need.
We reflected on three inward attitudes that lead toward simplicity:
- receiving what we have as a gift,
- trusting that what we have is cared for by God,
- and making what we have available to others.
When we live this way, we begin to loosen our grip. We stop treating life as something we must endlessly optimize, secure, or accumulate. We discover that contentment is not found in finally getting enough, but in realizing there is enough.
There is a simple song we sing in the Family Service at Calvary. The lyrics:
There is enough. There is enough. There is enough.
Oh, enough and some to share!
Our Diocesan Bishop Kristin Uffelman White often begins meetings with singing together a simple chant, repeating:
What we need is here.
And simplicity is not merely inward. It takes visible shape in our lives. Foster offers practical invitations: buy things for usefulness rather than status, resist addictive compulsions, give things away, enjoy things without needing to own them, and reject anything that distracts us from seeking first the Kingdom of God.
Perhaps one of the most radical acts in our culture is simply to become less driven by anxiety and acquisition. To speak plainly. To rest. To share. To stop curating an image of success. To delight in ordinary things. To trust that our value does not come from productivity, possessions, or recognition.
Ironically, the more complicated our world becomes, the more countercultural simplicity is.
Maybe that school lunch portal became a spiritual lesson after all. Beneath all the passwords, verification codes, and unnecessary hoops is a deeper question: what in our lives is unnecessarily complicated? What burdens are we carrying that God never asked us to carry?
St. Paul share the hope of the gift of simplicity in his letter to the Philippians:
“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” – Philippians 4:12
The invitation of simplicity is not deprivation. It is freedom.
