Less Is More

David Norris

“Tis a gift to live simple, tis a gift to live free” goes an old Shaker verse. We all admire the words and the thought behind them, but how many of us in the American Christian church try to live out this truth?

Within the past twenty years the Lord has led my wife and me to move our family from a metropolis of several million people to a city of several hundred thousand to the town of Medford.

Along the way we have discarded much of the stuff we once thought was so essential, and in so doing we have begun to find our freedom. There’s truth in the saying that “the more things you own the more things that own you.”

We have found that the fewer things we allow to own our time, energy and attention the more we are able to focus on the needs of other people. Without the clutter we can more easily see and reach out… a simple truth lived out for us by Jesus, who as a man owned only what he carried and could thereby touch and care for anyone He met.

There’s an old lie loose among us and its voice grows louder day-by-day. It’s core ideal is captured on bumper stickers saying: “He that dies with the most toys wins.” What does he win?

On the other hand we can all sell everything we own in a giant garage sale and move into monastic cells, but Solomon in Ecclesiastes 7:18 teaches us that a man of wisdom avoids all extremes. Instead, we each need to listen for that still small voice and obey what we hear.

The Lord speaks to each of us right where we are. He’s told our family to spend less on things and more on people. He told the rich young ruler to sell it all and follow Him.

Individually, He may not be saying those specific things to anyone else, but to all of us as the current Christian community, I believe we would please Him if we were to follow His example and live more simply so that others may simply live.
It’s simple to say, but harder to do. Yet Jesus assured us that we will know the truth and the truth will set us free.

David Norris writes from Medford, Oregon.