January 4 – Simplicity
Nancy Thomas
Simplicity of
Heart
Read: Psalm 73:23-26, Col. 3:3-4
As
any who have attempted to de-clutter their life know, simplicity can be
complicated. It involves tackling not only the accumulation of stuff—those bins
of college syllabi, old magazines, childhood treasures—but extra tasks we’ve
taken on, organizations we’ve joined, the demands other people make on us, and
all the clutter in our minds.
Recently
on a meditational walk I found myself repeating a simple prayer: “You are my
life. You are my life.” It was as though God was reeling me in, bringing me
back to the basic simplicity of soul from which all else flows. I found myself
asking, with the psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has
nothing I desire beside you.”
True
simplicity begins in the heart. It flows from a life oriented to the source of
all life, from the deep knowledge that in God alone we “live and move and have
our being.”
As
I walked that trail, I began to affirm, “Above all relationships and
roles—spouse, parent, grandparent, friend, minister—you are my life. Above all
I possess or hold on to for security—my home, my books, my insurance policies,
my investments—you are my life. Above all the intangibles I cling to—my health,
my education, my achievements, my talents, my rights, my dreams—above all this,
you are my life.” And I found myself praying, “Oh Lord, let it be. Change my
heart. Keep reeling me into yourself.”
I
am sensing that only when we live from the center of a life oriented to God can
we move out freely into our world as God’s agents of reconciliation and peace.
Prayer:
“Take from our souls
the strain and stress,
and let our ordered
lives confess the beauty of thy peace.”
– John Greenleaf Whittier
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