Simplicity!

We went to church today at Longstreet Methodist church.  It was homecoming.  It has really become an annual tradition for us. Sometimes we just go for lunch.  Sometimes, like today,  we get there in time for singing and the morning message.  To some, it may seem odd for us to go to homecoming at a church that we can't really call home.  Neither Deb nor I ever attended there regularly.  In fact, about the only time we have ever been there is for homecoming and other special occasions.  We go there because it is a place that is so special to many of our friends that mean a lot to us.  Friends that we truly love.

It is a 202 year old structure that has been added onto only once, as far as I can tell.  The two front doors are original to the structure.  They are kind of rough hewn.  The nails were probably handmade and the hinges certainly were.  It is a simple structure that was built back in the days when construction in the south, at least this part of the south, was really simple.  Life itself was simpler in those days too.

   

Danny Mathis was today's speaker.  It is not his "home" church either, but he spoke about how he spent a lot of time there as a young man in the seventies and how he got his bearings as a young Christian there.

Danny used this setting to talk about the simplicity of salvation. How easy it is to make our relationship with God overly complex. 

Of course, that is all true, but don't we sometimes,  (maybe most of the time,)  make our life, especially our relationships overly complex?  It is so easy to expect more of people that they can deliver.  It is also easy to put OUR expectations on other people; expectations that are our goals for them, and not theirs.  We do it to our friends.  We do it to our parents.  We do it to our children.  (Sometime we even do it to people beside us or in front of us in traffic.) We are responsible for our own disappointment in others because we EXPECT them to be what we want them to be, rather than what they are meant to be.

Danny talked about clutter.  I am sure he was mostly referring to clutter in our spiritual lives, but it could also apply to other clutter in our lives, our homes, our cars, and our minds.  I certainly am guilty of having so many thing on my mental list of "to dos" that I get so bogged down that I don't get any of it, or at least not much of it done.  He had a solution: simplify!  In fact he used the KISS phrase: "Keep it Simple Stupid."

I couldn't help but think about my dear bride, Deb.  Several years ago when she was thinking about retirement, she decided that she (we) had too much clutter in our lives.  She vowed to "Simplify" her, which really meant our, lives.  She has been on this quest for several years and even though I am a slow learner, I am beginning to get it.  (In some areas of my life, I am practically rehab slow...) 

In some areas of my life, I am so organized.  In other  (most) areas I am so cluttered and I really need to work on those areas.  I have a good friend who collects and saves.  He sometimes says that he is just a bag or two (of junk) short of being featured on "Hoarders."   He say things like, "...because one day I might really need those headlight rings for a 1964 Nash Rambler.  Who knows!"

I laugh when he says these things, but even though I may not collect car parts, there is so much clutter in my life.  I have books that I will never refer to or read again.  I have tools that I will probably never use.  I know that I have old salvage wood that will never find its way into a project.  But that is not all, I have attitudes that need to go.  I have expectations that I need to get rid of.  Fears? Prejudices?  Who know what else?

Lastly, I will mention one final point on simplicity.  Knowing that we were going to eat after Danny spoke and knowing that Danny was the guest speaker, some woman, (I didn't hear her name,) made Danny a German chocolate cake.  That is his favorite!  If you have slowed down enough to think about your friend's favorite cake and actually have the time to make it for him, you have pretty much mastered the simplicity sermon...