Simplicity: Focused Life, Part One

I'm in a new season of life. After (virtually) all my life of being a nomad/vagabond type, the Lord has led me (and my family) into the new realm of home ownership. Part of this has to do with Calling. Not that I believe in land ownership as a sacred thing per se; I think land stewardship is a more of a God-focused 'posture' (the land is the Lord's, and we are stewards of that). But our society doesn't work under that understanding - that all is the Lord's. From the get-go the U.S. has been a mad rush to get land. But through the insanity of rentals versus home ownership, it (oddly enough) is seemingly more feasible and practical for us to buy than rent - not to mention the investment factor. It's not easy, but necessary. Until now, however, we have lived a nomad lifestyle. All of our belongings have fit into a trailer. There is peace in that. However, I am running more and more into people with the mentality: "just wait, now that you can settle, the stuff (clutter) will come." I disagree, and am willing to live life as an experiment...or rather a proclamation. I believe that the Lord calls His followers to share in His simplicity. This might not be a popular view in our unapologetically materialistic society, but come on western church and society, the call of Christ is a call to simplicity.

Micah 6:8 is (more and more) becoming a life verse for me. It's a verse that I've used in my devotional life, it is used in our discipleship model, and it is also a text that is addressed in my study of simplicity and the Christian's call to it. It says,

Mankind, He has told you what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love mercy , and to walk humbly with your God. 

In Richard Foster's book Freedom of Simplicity, he highlights that compassion and justice combined "call us to simplicity of life." He also points out that the word for mercy (or kindness, or loving kindness) is Hesed, in the Hebrew. This is the same word that God declared Himself to be to Moses in Exodus 34:5-7

And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, 'The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love [hesed] and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love [hesed] for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.'

The word "hesed" is one of those hard to translate words. It does mean mercy or kindness, but it also carries the idea of endurance or faithfulness - a covenantal love. So, it is as if the compassionate God full of mercy and justice requires of us to love this hesed, this covenantal, relational kindness.

The Triangle 

One of the "life shapes" that we use in our discipleship model (developed by 3DM), is the triangle. Up, In, and Out (I intentionally used the oxford coma there). The balance of the Christian life is developing a Micah 6:8 lifestyle of Up (walking humbly with God), In (loving hesed), and Out (acting justly). Our identity comes from our relationship with God, and we grow mature in the Body as we live lives of acting justly.

The more we live a life of first thing (God) first (Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind), and living a life that flows out of that (to your neighbor), not only is life simpler, but it is more meaningful. It doesn't stop at Up, and it doesn't stop at In. Our lives are meant to be a balance. I'm also finding that the deeper you want to go in Out, the deeper you need to go in the others. No man is an island, and the Christian life is three dimensional. If that is our paradigm, it will influence the entire way that we live and engage the world. 

We tend to complicate things, but the Gospel calls us to simplicity: a single-mindedness in a complex world. It requires abandon. It requires a paradigm different from the rest of the world. Instead of merely endorsing a movement toward asceticism where we can build up some sort of pedestal to prop up our piety (sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously), let's look at it a different way. It's living a focused life, focused on Christ and postured in such a way that we can follow His lead, unhindered by the constraints of our society. So, I suppose I have a series brewing: "Focused Life."